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Soundwave on 30 April 2017
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MisterManGuy said:
Soundwave said:

The whole women, seniors, and parents are a central part of the Nintendo audience is a bunch of revisionist history anyway. Nintendo in the 80s was mainly played by young boys who were basically the hardcore gamers of the day. The only thing that's really changed today is those kids continued gaming into their teenage/20s/and even 30s so the industry expanded mainly because of that. 

This is fairly accurate of what it was like back then.

Your parents didn't play Nintendo regularily, it was something that mom/dad maybe tried once, sucked at, you laughed at them, and didn't want you playing too much and that was it. 

The Wii is the only system Nintendo has really ever made that was aimed expressly at those different non-gaming demographics, but that market is gone now because smart devices took that audience away. Switch is just Nintendo returning back to their roots if anything, a more gamer centric device that doesn't rely on casuals to drive adoption. The only main difference today is "kids" aren't the extent of the market anymore, you have kids who become teenagers and adults who maintain enthusiasm for video games for years and years, that was not really prevalant in the NES era, it was mainly kids. 

This was largely in America though. Video games were just comming back into popularity, and they were largely seen as childeren's toys. The NES, unlike the Famicom was marketed almost exclusively to young boys, while it's Japanese counterpart had more broad appeal. Video Games have evolved since then, and simply saying casual gamers and women are forever Smartphone slaves is a gross oversimplification and completely oblivious to actual facts.

The Switch is Nintendo returning to its roots, but it's their fun for everyone broad appeal roots of the Famicom, Game Boy, DS, and yes, the Wii. It's not this hardcore gamer machine like you claim it is. 

Why is playing on a smartphone being a "slave"? As opposed to being a "Nintendo slave"?

Have you guys ever genuinely considered that smartphones do the whole "casual play" and "games the average woman might like" way better than even the Wii or DS ever could? The number of people who play smartphone games dwarfs even the DS total userbase. The games are simple and easy to play because they have to be, without buttons developers cannot make the games too complex, so a lack of buttons for that audience is actually a bonus. The platform is far more convienant as a smartphone is always with you. And the games are free .... can't beat that price. 

The demographics of Switch sales don't support what you're saying either. It's older men clearly buying, also 1,2 Switch is not the driving software title as 75% of Switch owners are opting not to buy it, and Just Dance looks like a flop. 

There are core gamers who are women and they like consoles, and that's cool, but they are not special snowflakes asking for totally different games be made for them for the most part. They like the same games the guys do. 

I would agree targetting women who normally don't play wouldn't be a bad play if ... we are having this conversation in 2006. Unfortunately it's 2017 for that arguement, and smartphones have taken that market and made it into a red ocean, probably the reddest ocean imaginable actually. There are more smartphone games with more marketing than console games these days.