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Forums - Nintendo - Should Nintendo Target Adults More With Their Next Handheld?

DanneSandin on 19 February 2015

I think this is an interesting and valid question to be discussed! I think the initial massive boost in sales are due to long time costumer upgrading their ordinary 3DS to N3DS, so I'm not sure how big an effect the commercials have had yet - I think that remains to be seen in the following weeks. If Nintendo keep on advertising to an older audience with N3DS and sales are consistently up, THEN you have a case. As of now, you're drawing a premature conclusion that "adult commercials = sale boost". Wait and see.

But I agree that Nintendo should target an adult audience more aggressively - but NOT on behalf of the kids commercials. Nintendo simply needs to advertise more, and do so more smartly. When targeting adults, talk more about the specs and mature titles, when targeting kids, show fun and engaging interactions between other kids.



I'm on Twitter @DanneSandin!

Furthermore, I think VGChartz should add a "Like"-button.

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Dusk on 19 February 2015

Target everyone.



Gotta figure out how to set these up lol.

Soundwave on 19 February 2015
Dusk said:
Target everyone.


I think this is the type of thing that gets Nintendo trouble. 

"Target everyone" just doesn't give a product any direction or focus. And consumers feel that too. 

Apple for example, lots of kids want Apple products. Badly. But does Apple make any design or marketing decisions specifically for kids? Not really. 

They know they are an upmarket, premium product. And that image immediately resonates with consumers. Whereas lets look at a product "for everyone" -- the Wii U. It tries to do ten different things with no real cohesive sense of identity or brand market. 

There's a saying I like it goes something like this "pick one side of the street to walk on, if you walk in the middle of the street, you're just going to get run over". 




leedlelee on 19 February 2015

Nintendo should target adults in addition to children...
Before the launch of New 3DS/Majora's Mask, I only ever saw Nintendo adds on kids' networks...
Now that is not the case...
And I realize this is entirely anecdotal, but ride the NYC subway for a day and you will see a high amount of adults with Nintendo handhelds...
I know there are kids out there who appreciate the 3DS, but for the most part kids are killing time on the subway with smart phones...
They need to appeal to the generation that remembers the benefits of dedicated handheld gaming...



Have a nice day...

teigaga on 19 February 2015
RolStoppable said:

My assessment of you as a poster is correct. Your conclusions are merely what you wish to be true because they are what you would like Nintendo to make; you don't care about anything else. Take the bolded part, for example.

You argue that actual quality as well as the things you listed in the second to last paragraph in the OP are what creates long term customers. That, however, is directly contradicted by the facts. The GameCube had plenty of sequels to N64 games, Nintendo made an effort to get mainline Resident Evil exclusively on their platform plus they developed Eternal Darkness, they upgraded to a dual analog controller and optical media and made their system powerful, they reached out to EA and had things like NBA Live that featured Mario characters, they had great exclusive Star Wars games with the two Rogue Squadron titles from Factor 5. All of the aforementioned things are exactly what you claim to drive sales, yet all of that led to a decline of Nintendo's customer base. It's like a parody at this point.

Lol, but where are you getting the logic that these decisions caused Ninetndo's decline? 

2. Aside from the gamecube being a year late purple lunchbox only capable of playing minidiscs, The most defining thing was that the gamecube was that it was not the PS2. No one could compete against the PS2, it had Final Fantasy X, GTA3, Metal Gear Solid 2, Tekken Tag as exclusives and shit load of hype before the gamecube was even a month old. Why would anyone outside of core Nintendo fans buy a gamecube over the PS2? Having the occasional Resident Evil or Starwars isn't going to make up for that, although I'm sure they done more for the gamecube hardware sales then making more of the same Nintendo games. 



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teigaga on 19 February 2015
Soundwave said:
Dusk said:
Target everyone.


I think this is the type of thing that gets Nintendo trouble. 

"Target everyone" just doesn't give a product any direction or focus. And consumers feel that too. 

Apple for example, lots of kids want Apple products. Badly. But does Apple make any design or marketing decisions specifically for kids? Not really. 

They know they are an upmarket, premium product. And that image immediately resonates with consumers. Whereas lets look at a product "for everyone" -- the Wii U. It tries to do ten different things with no real cohesive sense of identity or brand market. 

There's a saying I like it goes something like this "pick one side of the street to walk on, if you walk in the middle of the street, you're just going to get run over". 

Perfect post. I was just going to say Targeting "everyone" specifically means not taregting kids in order for the device be well percieved amongst older demographics. If there content, fun and hype is there, kids will want it. You don't need to make it baby blue and glow in the dark, unless by kids we're talking toddlers in which case they're not valid target for any gaming machine lol



AnthonyW86 on 19 February 2015

Adults and handhelds... sorry that combination made me giggle a bit. In the day and age of tablets and smartphones not that many adults are going to buy a handheld gaming console, let alone take it with them as an extra device.

It's a dying market.



teigaga on 19 February 2015
AnthonyW86 said:
Adults and handhelds... sorry that combination made me giggle a bit. In the day and age of tablets and smartphones not that many adults are going to buy a handheld gaming console, let alone take it with them as an extra device.

It's a dying market.

How much of the 3DS' market to you suspect to be adults vs Kids? Out of curiosity.



Soundwave on 19 February 2015
RolStoppable said:
DanneSandin said:

I think it's a shame that you didn't answer him properly, since I think he had a few good points in there. But I guess you've had similar arguments with others before and have grown tired of answering the same counter-arguments?

Yeah, I've had such arguments before.

Think of a hypothetical scenario where the mentioned flaws didn't exist, so you are looking at a cool black console that has proper sequels to Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time as well as a Perfect Dark 2. Take into account that Nintendo's grip on the FPS market on consoles would dwindle because of Microsoft's Halo and the Xbox's architecture that shifts PC ports away from Nintendo and towards Microsoft; furthermore, take into account that Microsoft's marketing angle would be about painting Nintendo as kiddie which would be easy to do because Nintendo would not abandon Mario while Microsoft has Halo and all those FPS ports of PC titles. Now pretend Nintendo's proper sequels sold just as well as their N64 counterparts and each one of those additional copies sold (compared to the actual GC software sales) would result in an additional hardware sale. It's a very generous way to look at it, but with reasonable estimates you would still be looking at only 30-35m consoles sold.

That sounds acceptable until you realize that this best case scenario is the same amount as the N64 sold, and when you extrapolate this strategy to future generations (focusing on the enthusiast gamer), the ever-increasing development costs for games coupled with the hardware requirements that Sony, Microsoft and third parties have been pushing for, make it quickly clear that it's an unsustainable way for Nintendo to run their business. And that's why I am laughing at such suggestions.

Then again, we are talking about handhelds here. The OP is talking as if EA is a major player when it comes to handheld games. Now that's funny.

Nintendo needed to act more decisively with the GameCube and be more on point, allowing Microsoft to walk onto their territory and basically retreating was always a very bad strategy on their part. They never should have let them make such inroads in the first place. MS isn't some unstoppable force, Sony has been able to largely hold them off for years now, outside of the PC OS scene, MS is actually a fairly clumsy competitor. Unfortunately Nintendo found a way to make even more mistakes than MS did. 

N64 sized hardware totals for their console (33 million-ish) I'm sure Nintendo execs would run down the street naked to see those numbers again if it included N64-sized software sales too. 

EA was just one single suggestion. Actually EA is one of the biggest mobile gaming producers ... all their games on tablets/phones, but FIFA has always been very popular on PSP. A very powerful Nintendo handheld could for the first time provide FIFA and Madden experiences on the go that are fairly close to console quality. That wouldn't be a bad feather in Nintendo's cap. 



Materia-Blade on 19 February 2015
Mr.GameCrazy said:
RolStoppable said:

My assessment of you as a poster is correct. Your conclusions are merely what you wish to be true because they are what you would like Nintendo to make; you don't care about anything else. Take the bolded part, for example.

You argue that actual quality as well as the things you listed in the second to last paragraph in the OP are what creates long term customers. That, however, is directly contradicted by the facts. The GameCube had plenty of sequels to N64 games, Nintendo made an effort to get mainline Resident Evil exclusively on their platform plus they developed Eternal Darkness, they upgraded to a dual analog controller and optical media and made their system powerful, they reached out to EA and had things like NBA Live that featured Mario characters, they had great exclusive Star Wars games with the two Rogue Squadron titles from Factor 5. All of the aforementioned things are exactly what you claim to drive sales, yet all of that led to a decline of Nintendo's customer base. It's like a parody at this point.

You do realize that Nintendo used smaller game discs for the GameCube than what PS2 and Xbox used, right? That affected third party support for the Gamecube.

That didn't stop x360 from getting many multi disk games. Third party bias and behind the scenes deals affected 3rd partysupport for gamecube.