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curl-6 on 05 April 2015
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binary solo said:
curl-6 said:

Their advertising does not reflect their actual consumer base, which is why it's ineffective. 

CS Lewis said it best:

“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”


Appealing to kids is the only way to grow sustainably over a long time. Adults do not become gamers, and gamer adults are mostly invested in established franchises and genres. So the only way to grow your player base is appealing to the young. But their attempt to appeal to the young gamer has been ineffective. And that's why Wii U is doing so poorly. They don't know how to appeal to the young gamer, they can't appeal to adult gamers who aren't already Nintendo fans.

Splatter has a similar problem. It overtly appeals to the young, it also appeals to the Nintendo adult core. But the young, as has been pointed out, don't want cartoony paint shooters, they actually want CoD. The young also want voice chat because they want to give friends and strangers shit while they're playing. A lot of adults prefer to play without the constant drone annoying and often offensive chatter. 

Splatoon is designed to be inclusive of young audiences, but not to the exclusion of adult players. Nothing about it is geared exclusively to children; adults can enjoy colourful visuals too, and in fact most of its players will be adults, because, as you say, the kids are busy playing GTA and COD.