Uhm, to be fair, Kate Upton and Liam Neeson in both of those commercials outmarket anything Sony and MS has done as well...

It's actually more fair to say that this mobile game has outmarketed the entirety of consoles...

Oh noes!

Sony/MS don't need to counteract smartphone marketing as much though because it doesn't cut into their demographics. A COD or Destiny player might play Clash of Clans sure, but not at the expense of their hardcore gaming fix on the PS4/X1. 

Nintendo? Doesn't have that luxury. 

And there's nothing stopping Nintendo from affording Kate Upton, in fact I suggested hiring someone like her a while ago, but lo and behold that smartphone game that no one knew about like two weeks ago is now trending big time because of that TV spot. 

I don't think you understand that throwing money at something blindly just doesn't work in console gaming advertisement...Who is to say that Nintendo buying an ad with Kate Upton would increase sales enough to pay for itself (even moreso when that ad is a super bowl ad)? Console games don't sell the same way as mobile games do...the audience is skewed much more strongly towards people who don't need tv spots then the mobile market

I think we're approaching the point where a group of monkeys would be able to come up with the better marketing strategy than the one Nintendo currently has. 

Like I said even when they do advertise, their commercials are lame. They're like 90s breakfast cereal commercials in tone/style:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE4WUEVrkRI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSmCv7hrPy4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=153G429U1xU

Smartphone commercials are hip/cool and mainstream, Nintendo's ads ... you could throw in Toucan Sam or Tony the Tiger and no one would see it as out of place. 

COD? Destiny? Hardcore?

This thread is 2much4me.

Soccer moms and crossword puzzle players aren't the ones buying COD and Destiny nor are they likely to be impacted at all from smartphone gaming. So yes, whether you like it or not those are games with hardcore gameplay mechanics, they just happen to be extremely successful ones that a lot of mainstream players buy.

But there's little/no overlap between Destiny and Candy Crush.  

Soccer moms aren't the only casual market. I don't know if you've realized this, but the new casual market is indeed the average Call of Duty player. They pick up their XB1/PS4, and they buy like 4 games a year consisting of COD, Madden, FIFA and some overhyped game like Destiny and Watch Dogs and wait for the next year. And no, Call of Duty is absolutely not a game with hardcore gameplay mechanics. A game like Dark Souls has hardcore gameplay mechanics. A game like Fire Emblem has hardcore gameplay mechanics. Just because you shoot things, doesn't make it hardcore. Call of Duty is one of the most simple and braindead franchises in gaming today; a toddler could play it on hard and have no difficulty.

Almost everyone with a smart phone plays smart phone games. They might not play Candy Crush, but they likely play some other alternative. This isn't an issue exclusive to Nintendo. Nintendo's marketing is bullshit, but it has little, if anything, to do with the marketing of smartphone games. This notion that this market is somehow eating Nintendo alive is wrong. The only thing it's hurting is the handheld market, and even now the 3DS is still doing very well for itself. The Wii U's issue isn't that it's competing with smartphones, as that crowd that only games on phones is never going to be interested in any console because the cost is simply too high.

They are also quite obviously aiming at a very specific audience...and according to Television and Video Analytics firm Ace Metrix, Nintendo actually had the number one advertisment of the 2014 holiday season. Just because an ad doesn't appeal to you, doesn't mean it isn't doing its job. The ads aren't supposed to be selling anything to you, you aren't the target audience for the ads. 

http://www.gamnesia.com/news/nintendo-has-the-top-rated-tv-ad-of-the-holiday-season#.VNbuI_nF-So

Instead of arguing with all of the stupidity coming out of this topic, all that I'll say is this. It's a good thing that people from these message boards are not running Nintendo. I'm not saying Nintendo's marketing is perfect, but if people here ran Nintendo, they'd be broke within a week.

Pro-tip: Marketing a $300 machine (or even a $60 game) that is based on a one time fee is vastly different than marketing a F2P game that relies on micro-transactions.