"In fact, I couldn’t understand how any grown person could be into the Gamecube or the Wii."

Try playing Melee and Double Dash during college years with a group of friends....

Try playing Wii Sports (bowling) while drinking with friends and girls... 

For me the hardest part is being a JRPG fan, husband, and a small business owner. Along with an active social life I find it much harder to set aside 2-4 hours one needs to really make progress in the genre. It almost becomes a part time job of "okay, Wednesday I have no plans so can get some time in the evening, then maybe next Sunday have the morning..."

I can only imagine introducing children into the mix would make gaming time pretty much cease to exist.

I was never really Nintendo gamer (I firmly fall into Zelda+MK stereotype), but I've gladly introduced my kids to Nintendo as soon as they were old enough to handle gamepads. Now (at ages 8 and 6) they are huge Zelda fans, love Mario, Kirby and Yoshi and lot of other Nintendo games and I don't see that changing any time soon.

Of course, as someone whose gaming diet has, for past 35 or so years, predominantly consisted of mostly 3rd party titles, I try to introduce them to as much variety as possible (they've just finished Portal 1). Honestly, I'm not sure what will happen when they hit 13-14, if games like Zelda will be still interesting enough for them or the allure of forbidden fruit will be too much - generally, I think this is Nintendo's biggest problem, how to keep those kids that turned teen.

I'm glad to hear this.

I went through a similar situation, not because of kids or something like that (I'm a very happy single person xDD), it was because of the puberty :P. I despised Nintendo game as too childish for me (sigh) and I spent lots of time playing other stuff and running away from them. I regret that stupidity as I haven't played some games that I'm sure I'd love today. With time, I found myself missing Nintendo games a lot, so I came back and I don't regret that decision, I love Nintendo more than ever.

Interesting and nice story

I never understood the mentality of ''oh thats too childish for me, i wont play it'' to begin with.

If a game is fun,then me personally, im gonna play it lol

Good for you. Maybe when I become a Dad, I may be back to nintendo as well but for now, I don't think so. I have tried many times before but can't keep up playing for more than 20 minutes.

I understand that's a common problem for many aging men, but I have faith our scientists will keep making progress on that front!

lol I hope you didn't get off topic because it does sound like it.