| Podings said: The NES and SNES relied on casual gamers too. They had nowhere else to go. So in that regard these systems were not terribly different from Wii and DS. I can also not take the title of this topic particularly seriously when the 3DS is outselling all home systems combined in Japan. |
While Nintendo owes a lot of it's success to casual games like Tetris, Duck Hunt (a pack-in title but still important) and Dr. Mario (my sister LOVED that game), those kinds of games were not the main focus of the NES and Gameboy (Tetris was probably the greatest original Gameboy game of all-time though. Pokemon was up there too. Pokemon Red/Blue single-handedly made me want to buy a Gameboy. It's my all-time favourite original Gameboy game). Core games like 2D Super Mario Bros, 2D Zelda and third-party titles like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were the meat and potatoes of the NES. Wii had 2D Super Mario Bros too. And the casuals bought 2D Super Mario Bros in large numbers. But 2D Super Mario Bros isn't the reason why the Wii took off. The motion controls brought Nintendo to the dance. 2D Super Mario Bros was just the icing and cherry on top.
The Japanese home console market has been in free-fall mode for the past 7-8 years now maybe while the DS and PSP were picking up the slack last gen. This gen it's smartphones and tablets and other forms of entertainment in Japan that are getting their attention.
