AngryLittleAlchemist said:
"That's part of it but hardly the only thing. Anyone who's objective about it can see and admit that Nintendo designs/markets their games towards that demographic in general. From the commercials, character designs, theme of the games, game covers, etc it's fairly evident that it is the case. That doesn't mean that the the older nintendo fans are immature or anything like that just because they play nintendo games. I know that part of the reason why a lot of nintendo fans are so defensive about this particular thing is that they think it's being implied or said that they are immature for playing those games."
(1) You make a good point here but I think it's rendered a little invalid for a few reasons. One - the Switch's marketing is still almost exclusively with adults and teenagers. If we were to make a false equivalency where a console's superficial marketing determines what the age bracket is, then the use of teenagers and adults over kids would take precidence over a "kiddy" art style because that's up to the game's developers, and is seperate from the console itself. There's two big reasons why Nintendo sticks with a cartoony art style even for something like Zelda - the uniqueness of it; most adult Nintendo fans have grown up with Nintendo and love their unique art styles, and along with that the fact that it reserves power. Nintendo would be in the shitter if they focused on realistic graphics with the Switch, so while yes their cartoony sensibilities seem "kiddy" there's a lot of reasons to consider why they choose that style, and I don't think it's just to appeal to kids, although that has a small part in it.
"Anyway, I think their strategy is and has always been to get a kid to want it and he/she tells their about parents about it."
(2) https://youtu.be/tkI6c6MvBko Literally a video addressing this : D
" I think they're flawed for the most part because of the people who are doing the surveys/data collecting aren't gamers so they're just lumping things together. Mobile and social shouldn't be included into the totals at all. I wouldn't call mobile/social players, gamers per se because most of them are completely ignorant of gaming culture and the other gaming markets. "
(3) Previous response : "Now obviously it's hard to know what are considered "games" but a lot of these studies specifically focus on computers and consoles titles , which is much better than including mobile titles."
Why are you pretending like you haven't read what i wrote? Anyways, it's hard to know because the study isn't very specific, but some of the stuff actually points to one thing and then another. For instance they say that only 29% of gamers are under 18, but then say tha 74% of k-8 teachers use learning games. To me, this means that the study is doing it's job and seperating mobile/learning games from real games, since the statistic would *HAVE* to be higher.
Another study says that 65% of users own a video game playing device, while 48% own a dedicated game console. Of course this looks like a terrible pool until you realize PC might not be included in that bracket of dedicated consoles. To add to that, 47% of gamers in the study including mobile, pc and console games are between the ages of 18 and 49, which correlates nicely to the amount of people who own a dedicated console. And the average frequent purchaser of video games is 38. Again, this is not the be all end all of arguments, but I don't think that kids, or young teens take up as much of the market as you'd think. If studies didn't rule in mobile, the conclusion would still probably be that young adults to middle aged people are buying the majority of hardcore PC and console real estate, since most people who clog up the mobile database and don't play actual games are incredibly old people or incredibly young people. But again, I really think the rabid fanbase of adults regarding the Switch is more improtant than this argument. I've just simply seen more adults talk about the system tehn kids.
"I meant "It is the only IP, nintendo has that has reach outside of the gaming market" to be with "Pokemon is in a league of it's own with brand recognition and more importantly, people wanting to buy products in relation to it in comparison to the rest of nintendo's staple of games.". i didn't mean that people don't know of nintendo's characters."
Right...which is what i'm addressing...
" People know of nintendo's staple of characters but that doesn't mean that want to buy anything related to them. They don't have the kind of consumer appeal/reach outside of gaming that pokemon does on a wordwide level with products related to it. it's why I used the show as an example. "
(4) Here's where things get tricky. In order for you to be correct, you'd have to do mental gymnastics. If you mean to say that Pokemon is the only Nintendo series that has appeal in movies, animation, and playing cards outside of gaming ... then you are technically correct? But I assume we're talking about the abilitiy to take people outside of gaming and make them buy a game ... which is what I've been addressing this whole time. The first point of view has no place in a discussion about whether or not a series of games are niche, because a Mario game can still pull in people who aren't gamers, whether or not it has an anime. We're talking about games and realistically speaking Mario, Smash Brothers and Mario Kart have just about as much of a chance to get people into games as Pokemon does.
"We've been over niche before, haven't we? I'm sure it was you I had this talk with on it."
(5) Previously : " I know we already had this conversation before, but your points make even less sense now. You say it appeals to a niche part of the market - "gamers" - but Nintendo games have a much wider demographic than any other and beyond that "gamers" take up a majority of the console market. And then you say it wont sell to the general gamer. What? "
"He says stuff like this consistently."
Have you just not read anything I posted ?
"I used it in the way i did before in a different thread but yet again, you're conflating it as "the games being niche". I didn't call nintendo games or it's staple of characters niche. I was referring to the part of the market that nintendo focuses on being niche."
(6) Now this literally makes no sense. This ENTIRE discussion we've talked about how you believe that kids are the majority - "Nintendo focuses on children and young teenagers while the rest of the big 3/ third party game devs focus on teenagers and adults. So you could word it as "nintendo games have a much wider demographic than any other and beyond that gamers take up on a majority of the gaming market" and you wouldn't be wrong. "
And I stated "kids and young teens are actually a minority"(which to be fair is debatable, but even if it is wrong that doesn't really change my point since I believe Nintendo games cover almost all demographics), which made you defend the point that kids and young teens are a majority, and that Nintendo mainly focuses on that. And now you're saying that the section of the market Nintendo focuses on is niche? Do you have no consistentcy? This literally makes no sense. You've been saying this entire time that young teens and kids take up a majority of the market - hence why I could make the statement "nintendo games have a much wider demographic than any other" and you yourself said that would be in the right. That's not "niche" that is literally adressing a majority of the market.
Either way, a big problem I have with your arguments is that you focus too much on art design to make a coherent point about how Nintendo games are mainly made for kids. Yes, some Nintendo games are clearly easy games and a majority of their games are cartoony - but I think the latter has more to do with consistency and wanting to utilize hardware to the greatest potential. Nintendo games are quite often made with a wide demographic - from Kindgeraten to adults - in mind. It's why you have games like Breath of the Wild which is hard as balls, or Splatoon 2 which emphasises team work and down plays instant gratification, you'd also have to have much better motor skills and hand-eye coordination to play Splatoon than that of most kids. But look, even if Nintendo literally put a print on their games saying "THIS IS ONLY A KIDS GAMES! NO ADULTS ALLOWED!" that wouldn't change that kids, - and especially adults and older teenagers, are interested in the Switch. It's possible for a company to misunderstand their market share, hell it's what happened with the entirity of the Wii U era and its' why Nintendo rectified the marketing with the switch. All of this is to say that even if Nintendo only wanted kids to play their games, your point makes no sense anyways, because there isn't a coorelation with your ideas - everyone from kids to young teens to old teens to young adults to adults play Nintendo games, and the marketshare in that respect has been becoming more even for a long time now, possibly even skewing to adults. Your point is detached from reality, no matter how much you think Nintendo's big game plan is to market just to kids, and no matter how accurate that idea is - because by law of the marketshare, there games wouldd still have a bigger demographic and wouldn't be niche.
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