I think I expressed myself quite poorly in my last post.
I was talking about how the older Nintendo games didn't target the people who were looking mainly for an intellectual challenge. Their games have always been somewhat intellectually challenging, but they were made in a way so that anyone could finish them. That doesn't mean they were easy for most people, but I'd imagine the majority wasn't complicated enough for a large portion of the adult audience.
The point was mainly to illustrate that the "old" Nintendo didn't make games for everyone. A large portion of the adults,as well as the teenagers, weren't really targeted. It's not that Nintendo didn't target the adults, nobody really targeted those adults. They weren't really seen as potential customers, or at least not priority customers.
And that's one of the changes Nintendo did this generation, as you said. They targeted the adults to a larger degree, with games like Brain Training and Wii Fit.
I'm also not trying to claim that a game needs gore and blood to be adult. It's however clear that blood and gore makes the game not targeted at children. In other words; it's a game made with the older teenagers in mind, rather than the younger people. In fact, I'd say that "blood and gore" games aren't really adult at all, their target is the old teens and young adults.
So rather than say that everyone targeted the adults, I'd say it depends on how you define adults. You're going to have to divide people into 3 groups, rather than just two.
Children, ages up to 15 or so (depending on the person, of course, but that's the ballpark)
Teens/Young adults, ages 16 through 30, or so.
Adults, ages 30 and up.
It's not as simple as just putting ages on it - sometimes people remain "young adults" in their gaming interests until they're 50 - but there's a clear development among which games people like. The standard paths are kind of like this
1. Interested in Nintendo-esque games (child) > Interested in more gore-y games (teen/young adult) > Interested in less gore-y games again, or "Nintendo-esque" games
2. Interested in Nintendo-esque games (child) > Interested in more gore-y games (teen/young adult) > Loses interest in gaming
3. Interested in Nintendo-esque games (child) > Interested in more gore-y games (teen/young adult) > Loses the bias against "childish artstyle" games, and pretty much likes all games
4. Interested in Nintendo-esque games (child) > Interested in more gore-y games (teen/young adult) > Interested in more "casual" games (Wii Fit, Brain Training)
5. Interested in Nintendo-esque games (child) > Interested in more gore-y games (teen/young adult) > Keeps an interest in the more gore-y games all their life
Rather than say that Nintendo targets children, it's more fair saying they used to target mainly the children, as well as the adults in category 1, and a smaller extent category 3. You're right on that part.
But I think that at some point Nintendo sort of gave up on the category 3 adults. Fighting for the adults who care equally much about nearly all games takes too much work. Nintendo is the world's best at appealing to children and the category 1 adults. They're not the world's best at targeting the category 3 adults (although definitely among the best).
Instead, they're now targeting the category 4 adults, while leaving the category 3 and 5 adults to the rest of the industry.
I'd say that Sony, however, is still attempting to appeal to everyone. They try to appeal to children and category 1 adults through a fair bunch of their games, and they have a fair bit of games for the category 4 adults. Of course, they mostly try to target the young adults and category 3/5 adults, but they try to appeal to everyone. Nintendo doesn't.
