Over the years the Wii has developed a casual gamer stigma as a result of family-friendly advertising campaigns and software released for the console.
Surprisingly, according to Nintendo boss man Satoru Iwata, this was all a “misunderstanding” and that it wasn’t the firm’s intention to focus on the casual gamer.
Iwata, in a recent investor meeting, said:
“We do not think that developing video games for casual or light users is the only way to expand the gaming population. There was a misunderstanding that Nintendo was dedicated to such games at some stage of the lifespans of the Wii and the Nintendo DS.
We have made efforts to develop video games that are in tune with various consumer tastes; however, we have not been able to gain adequate consumer understanding regarding our intentions, while in the common perception there are no or few core users playing Nintendo platforms, which is not the case.”
He also called for the company’s business strategy to focus on creating a “flow from beginner to expert” to help lead casual users into the core gamer setup, otherwise the video game industry would “gradually shrink”.
Sorry Nintendo, no matter how much you try to fight it, NOTHING will erase the memory of adverts such as this:
Source: Nintendo
xdarkmagician
Nintendo has always been about family friendly games. They removed the blood from Mortal Kombat when it was ported from arcade. They don’t advertise mature theme games like Madworld. Theres lots of history of their kid friendly approach, but I do believe them about getting in too deep with the casual market. Its what happens when ‘bean counters’ run your business. They saw huge short term profits in casual games and decide to exploit the market. They received their gains… while they were there to collect, but they neglected the hardcore gamer. Hardcore gamers are your foundation in this industry, you cant ignore them unless you want your business to come crashing down around you. Now Nintendo, with a crashed business, needs to rebuild their foundation, so I’d expect them to say things like this to win back the hardcore audience they sacrificed. We’ll see more statements like this and an ad campaign that will try to recapture a harder image.
Forrest_01
What, like Mario violating Princess Peach??? :O
TROPtastic
*GASP* Don’t you even suggest violating Princess Peach!
justboy
The market would shrink?
Surely more people are playing videogames than ever before!
The Lone Steven
Really? what a silly bunch we have been thinking that the zillions of shovelware aimed at kids was Ninty focusing on the casual market. *sarcasm*.
The Wii’s adverts were aimed at people who are not gamers. I mean, Wii Sports was the flagship title for the Wii(i think). I could list a lot of examples of shovelware that was aimed at the causal market.
Although i was wondering what had happened Grand Theft Auto:The Mushroom Kingdom, GoombaHunt, Call Of Mario, God of zelda, Battlepokemon.
TROPtastic
Actually, GTA: The Mushroom Kingdom sounds pretty trippy :P
Crocadillian
If you’re going to create a console that introduces people to gaming, it doesn’t need to look like a kids toy, have poor graphical hardware and firmware and create games with a look that reflects all of this. The mass market isn’t completely retarded, and by treating them like little kids you simply degrade the core market you are trying to build. They only need some guidance, not patronising.
Make it approachable, but make it meaningful, and build the experiences with the impact that has kept us buying games and game consoles for some time, then people may wake up and realise that theres more to games than a simple distraction and be truly interested.
Burgess_101
well put indeed ! especially the degrading the core market if the new generation of core gamers are used to sub-par graphics and poor shovelware titles than we are all doomed .
Awayze
Well the hardware on the Wii sucks to get the hardcore games from PS3 or 360. Nintendo saw a opening in the market and exploited it. They can no longer do that as people have realised Nintendo is for kids.
I bet the 3DS wouldn’t have been an epic fail if it had decent hardware in which 3rd party devs could make good looking games for it. One thing PSV did right.