I'll start this thread by showing you guys this very interesting link.

The article does not talk explicitly of Nintendo. In fact, it is dealing with geek culture from a feminist perspective, but unless you are a total knucklehead, you should be able to see the similarity between this, and how the game industry has treated the Wii.

So basically, the game industry has been stuck in this very toxic pattern of userbase optimization, that involves excluding unprofitable userbases. This while ignoring the real reasons why people from those userbases did not buy games in the first place, thus worsening the problem in exchange for predicatbility and shot-term profits.

First it started with the "Nintendo is only for kids stigma", and then, when the Wii was made to counter the problem of a narrow game demographic, the game industry, that was only interested in optimizing that narrow demographic reacted in a very hostile fashion, dividing up gamers into the cool "hardcore" gamers, and the n00b "casual" gamers, trying to once again make these "casuals" feel alienated from gaming. The worst part is that it seems to have suceeded.

Here are some exempts from the article:

"Let’s say the tracking data now says that 80% of men bought the candy bar after the ads went live. But it also says that only 20% of women bought it. This means from the 50$ you spent on men, 40$ actually increased revenue, only 10$ wasted. When it comes to women, only 10$ made you sell candy bars, while 40$ have been wasted. Overall 50$ of advertising worked, the other 50$ didn’t. What do you do with you next 100$?

Are you going to spend your 100$ equally on men and women again? Are you willingly wasting 50$ again? Or are you spending those dollars exclusively on reaching more men, so that the 80% positive response yields you 80$ of successful advertising, while only 20$ go to waste?"

"Yes, excluding people based on demographic data makes sense to a lot of people in marketing. It’s considered a best practice and it actually is a pretty reliable way of increasing profit margins. And it is the least risky way of doing business. Spend your money where you get the most in return."

"Sure, with each iteration of marketing efforts, we kick more people out who not respond in a satisfying way, but we also need to improve the revenue we get from each of our target group customers individually. And it also would be great if some of the people we kicked out, would feel compelled to join the ingroup and change their behavior in favor of our profit. How do we do that? This is pretty easy, actually. You tell the members of your target group, that they are superior to those who are excluded"

Read the article and see if you come to the same conclusion as me.

Agree.

Doesn't anyone else find the similarity striking?

I believe you should paste a little part of the articule so lazy people can read it and discuss a bit...

OT: What the author says is 100% correct in my view. An easy way to see it was the boom of the on-rail shooters.

 RE5 and RE6 on the cool/hardcore consoles vs REUC/DC on the wii Casual console.

Dead space 1,2 and 3 on the cool consoles vs DS EX on the casual console.

And there are many more examples from different companies.

 Some people will say nintendo gamers do not buy third party games as if it was that simple. Normally third party games on any nintendo consoles are niche games, spin offs, gimped/rushed games. And sometime even then they sell well!!

I also reckon there are some good efforts and they flop, but there were/are some good effort that pay/paid off. It is sad, but nowdays when buying a third party game on any nintendo console is very normal to ask what features/DLC options are missing.

 Also, indiedevs normally try to release their games on any platform available, since they all want to reduce the risk of getting stuck with one or two options only, so why this does not apply to bigger companies? They have the resources to branch their games to as many consoles as possible and thus increase profit opportunities. It seems to me that they are still playing the cool-game for the cool-console game. 

I don't really care what you call it -- there are lots of people who like primarily violent action/fantasy games + first person shooters + sports sims.

That's a big portion of the gaming audience, as for starters young males have the most interest in video games and the most free time to play them.

Good idea. I picked some quotes I thought were relevant and added to the OP.

You're missing the point completely.

Nintendo does market and design their hardware/software more for kids than the other game makers too ... it's not like they're all neutral and somehow Nintendo gets painted with a "kiddy" brush for no reason. That's like Prince being upset that people call him effeminiate ... well the voice and wearing purple velvet and a fluffy shirt kinda with women's mascara kinda gives off a certain image. 

Nintendo chooses to have the image they have. The majority of their games are so bright/cheery/colorful they make even Disney cartoons seem gritty by comparision in some cases. 

How do you call those people that talk about games, buy games but almost dont play games.
Never beat games, maybe play them for a couple hours at best?
A mate of mine is like that.
He buys alot. Special editions too. But he almost doesnt play.

The industry loves people like him. So they'd probably call him something like 'über hardcore' or 'gaming connesseur' :D