KLXVER said:
Then you need to try something other than Kirby games. |
To be fair, he's not entirely wrong. Mario and Zelda have both had their difficulty scaled back significantly since SM64 and Majora's Mask, respectively. I died once during my initial playthrough of Skyward Sword, and that was off an instant death boulder kill. None of the recent 3D Mario games have been anywhere close to 64's difficulty either, at least imo.
With that said, there are plenty of difficult Nintendo titles out there. Unless the player opts for casual mode, Fire Emblem is pretty challenging even on normal, the recent Donkey Kong Country titles kicked people's teeth in, and the Metroid Prime titles (particularly Echoes) all posed a challenge. Smash Bros, Pokken, and Splatoon all have a high skill ceiling when it comes to multiplayer as well.
I think difficulty is nowhere near Nintendo's problem. I'd argue it's not a demographic problem at all; at this point, it's a catch 22 consisting of third party games and customers. Nintendo doesn't have good third party support, so people pass on their console, so even fewer third party developers make games for the next console, causing even fewer people to buy the next...etc. Nintendo needs to figure out some way to simultaneously generate excitement on the developer's end and appeal to a much wider group of gamers, or else the NX will come crashing down to Earth almost as soon as it takes off.
