| Resident_Hazard said: To be fair, 12% of the population isn't very big, and I don't think Nintendo is alienating some mass number of people that want to play it and simply won't get the same enjoyment out of it. Seriously, only about 16% of the US population seems to have purchased a DS in some form, and many of them bought more than one (I have two Lites myself). So the number of people who can't play the system is arguably going to be about the same number as those that buy it. And what's 12% of 16%? That's not very many people. I don't see what the big deal is about "kids under 7 not being able to play it." For the most part, kids under 7 don't need to be playing video games in general. My kid is 7 and I prefer him to play outside, despite what a massive gamer I am. I make him earn the right to play games, and when his grandparents bought him a DSi for Christmas last year, I was wary of the whole thing. Very few kids under 7 can even play video games with any amount of competence unless that's all they do, and if that's the case, that kid needs to be forced outside a couple days a week before he turns into a fat lazy nothing that does nothing but play games. Don't get me wrong, I love video games (obviously), but there's more to life than doing that 100% of the time. Like eating, and camping, and sex. Those are good things too (the latter also not for kids).
By the way, I don't think the PSP lost a lot of ground because of the idea of bringing console-like experiences to a portable. God of War on the thing is just amazing. The problems with the PSP were a near total lack of exclusives (mostly PS2 or Wii ports), and loading times from the UMD's--which don't translate well to on-the-go gameplay. Which, Sony seems to be fixing with the NGP as it will use media more like DS cards. Just a note. |
Why would you purposely alienate 12% of your audience? That is insane. And that's just people who can't see 3D very well. What about the people who get eyestrain/headaches/ill from it? Why does Nintendo have to purposely go out of their way to alienate a good part of their audience? Foolish behavior. Even the 3D movies have cheaper 2D versions. I know Nintendo went the 3D route because they were afraid of being disrupted by Apple and Google. But glasses-free 3D smartphones are already coming anyway. The HTC Evo 3D is coming out later this year. And now Nintendo is stuck with the 3DS. Nintendo can't afford to rely on gimmicks anymore. When smartphone gaming took off, the DS touchscreen was no longer a novelty. When the Kinect and Move hit the mark, motion control was no longer a novelty. And glasses-free 3D will no longer be a novelty once 3D gaming hits Android phones. Enough with the gimmicks. Focus on serving the consumer, not forcefeeding things down consumers' throats, not by telling a good chunk of your audience that you don't want their business.
Plenty of kids under 7 play videogames and even for kids 7 and up, parents are gonna freak out when they see those warning labels. You know how paranoid parents are about that stuff.
Chains of Olympus sold well but Ghost of Sparta sales were very, very poor. Home console experiences on the go are not the novelty that they used to be. At least outside Japan. In Japan, the home console market has shrunk so much that a lot of the home console gaming (ie. Monster Hunter, RPGs) have migrated to the portables.
