A look at games that Nintendo published since 2002

[Bodhesatva]

RolStoppable said:

ckmlb said:

8. By saying that the core game numbers in 2002-2003 are comparable to 2007 would be to ignore that the total number of games was smaller in those two years compared to 07 which is why the number of core games are close.

Total 2002 games on the GC in the US: 12

Total 2003 games on the GC in the US: 12

Total 2007 games on the Wii in the US: 17

The whole point of this list is to show that Nintendo isn't making more casual games at the expense of games aimed at their core audience.

If you want to prove that Nintendo is abandoning the core gamer audience, make a list of 2002 or 2003 core games (whichever games you think are core games) and do the same for 2006 (the 2007 comparison simply lacks because the list is incomplete at this stage in time). If the number of core games is bigger in 2002 or 2003 than in 2006 (provided you made a fair list), I will accept that Nintendo is abandoning the core gamer market.

You don't even have to enumerate each and every game, Rol, because that just leads to stupid arguments about whether game X is hardcore or game Y is not hardcore, and it just gets totally bogged down. Just look at the raw number of total titles released by Nintendo each year:

2002: 29
2003: 30
2004: 38
2005: 62
2006: 69
2007: 53

Clearly at the time of the DS's release, there was a significant jump in game production at Nintendo. This suggests that they aren't abandoning their initial audience, but simply adding on to it.

Here's a simple example: Imagine a company that makes hot dogs for customers. It has 4 employees on staff at any time, and they serve, on average, 100 customers per hour. Now imagine that the number of customers doubles to 200 an hour, and many of these people want hamburgers! To resolve this issue, you hire more staff, and dedicate those staff to making hamburgers. You haven't stopped making hot dogs, because clearly the demand is still there, but you've added on new staff for a new purpose.

And that's precisely what I think Nintendo has done here. If they were making the same number of games as they were back in 2002, before the casual gaming boom, then obviously some of their initial resources were redirected towards casual gaming instead. However, Nintendo has clearly increased production, and almost certainly has increased development staff to parallel this. In short, it appears that Nintendo is making casual games as well as hardcore games, not in exclusion to them.