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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Rethinking The Switch Audience And Where Nintendo Can Gain Users.

Soundwave on 13 May 2017
Aeolus451 said:
Soundwave said:

Switch isn't really a gimmick though. It's a fundamental functional change in how video games can be enjoyed. 

When you get a little bit older into your late 30s, you give less of a fuck about graphics and all that too. It's not always about having the latest/greatest, it's about being able to enjoy the style of games you love within the schedule of your life. 

Don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean that like 3DS graphics are ok, you still want something relatively modern (shaders, AI, physics, poly models, etc.), but it doesn't have to be an exact thing. 

This is going to be a big audience too -- 100 million people bought a PSOne, 150 million a PS2 .... these people who were 16-20 years old then are today 35/36/37/38. Life changes big time. 

So what you wanted to talk about from what I said is "switch isn't really a gimmick" and "graphics"? Ugh. Nostalgia is not gonna bring them back to nintendo or it would of happened every gen already. The reason why the 30+ year olds aren't really into nintendo's games is because they changed from when they played it when they were teenagers or younger. They grew up and their tastes evolved. You really can't expect 30 somethings to buy an expensive console and games for nostalgia's sake when they can just open up a box and blow the dust off a old console. 

Think about it. What kind of shows and movies do you think 30 year olds watch?

Virually every movie I go out with my friends these days is a comic book movie, which is kinda sad, but it is what it is and those are (gasp) children's characters essentially. 



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Soundwave on 13 May 2017
RolStoppable said:
Soundwave said:

I've never believed these are "seperate crowds" to begin with. I know many, many people who had an NES to begin with and like Mario, but just have a Playstation now. They're not willing to give up every publisher on the planet just to play games from Nintendo soley through their main gaming years, and to be honest that's a fair assesment, I understand why people would go that way.

Money is tight, realistically a lot of people only want/need 1 console, Sony or MS offered the widest variety of games, it was never anything personal against Nintendo.  

Zelda as a the killer app for Switch illustrates what the Switch can do for that older audience though, anyone who plays modern games can look at Zelda and see what it is (a giant open world RPG/adventure type game). 

That's a clear "no" as answer to my question. You go on to mention "money is tight" and "Sony/MS offer the widest variety of games" to lead into "money is not an issue and Zelda is enough."

I've wasted enough time in this thread.

I'm saying I can understand WHY in their late teens/20s a person who had been brought up on Nintendo consoles would choose instead to get a Playstation console and not everyone has the money or the desire to buy multiple consoles at that age especially. 

There's nothing wrong with a person circa 2001 saying "you know what, I'm getting a PS2, even though I loved my NES and SNES, it's time for a change". I wouldn't blame them. They're not "wrong". 

You take all this shit way too personal, get over the "message board console wars" bullshit, it's just stupid, and it's not real. These aren't street gangs with allegiances. People buy whatever suits their needs at that moment in thier life. I know people who went NES to SNES/Genesis to PS to PS2 to XBox 360 with a DS or Game Boy somewhere in there too, back to PS4, it's not that they disliked any of the previous brands, it just so happened at that time in their life that console made sense. I'm sure there tons of people like that on this very board. 



Aeolus451 on 13 May 2017
Soundwave said:
Aeolus451 said:

So what you wanted to talk about from what I said is "switch isn't really a gimmick" and "graphics"? Ugh. Nostalgia is not gonna bring them back to nintendo or it would of happened every gen already. The reason why the 30+ year olds aren't really into nintendo's games is because they changed from when they played it when they were teenagers or younger. They grew up and their tastes evolved. You really can't expect 30 somethings to buy an expensive console and games for nostalgia's sake when they can just open up a box and blow the dust off a old console. 

Think about it. What kind of shows and movies do you think 30 year olds watch?

Virually every movie I go out with my friends these days is a comic book movie, which is kinda sad, but it is what it is and those are (gasp) children's characters essentially. 

That's not what I asked. You got my point though. If Nintendo wants to get a piece of the older gamer pie, it will have to design games with them in mind. They're regular old games won't be anywhere near good enough.



vivster on 14 May 2017

A few things.

You haven't explained how "having no time" makes the Switch more desirable to any other console. Yes you can game on the go but since you don't have a lot of time this time slot is heavily contested by things smartphones do.

In your calculation you fail to account for the people that left since the release of the 3DS. Nintendo currently does not have a base of 3DS + Wii U sold. It's a lot less thanks to the advancement of technology and rampant double dipping.

I think Nintendo lost a lot more consumers than it will gain through your imaginary demographic, even if those account for 20m.



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Conina on 14 May 2017
vivster said:
You haven't explained how "having no time" makes the Switch more desirable to any other console. Yes you can game on the go but since you don't have a lot of time this time slot is heavily contested by things smartphones do.

I agree. Gaming is competing with a lot of other "entertainment tasks" like watching TV episodes, watching funny YouTube videos, web browsing or forum discussions.

If you do some of these other tasks "on the go" instead of doing them in your precious free time at home, you free some time at home for gaming with less compromises than on a mobile device.



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Conina on 14 May 2017
Mar1217 said:
Conina said:

I agree. Gaming is competing with a lot of other "entertainment tasks" like watching TV episodes, watching funny YouTube videos, web browsing or forum discussions.

If you do some of these other tasks "on the go" instead of doing them in your precious free time at home, you free some time at home for gaming with less compromises than on a mobile device.

Or all these people who are watching Esports on TV/Web and never even played the freaking game.

You don't understand. The amount of active (gaming) and passive entertainment time stays the same. But you shift some passive activities to your mobile time and free time at home for your active activities. There are much less compromises your have to make on a portable device (compared to much more powerful devices at home) for these passive entertainment options than for gaming.

I personally am a fan of mobile gaming and can understand that compromises are necessary on portable devices due to battery life and size/weight of the device. But you won't get many new people into handheld gaming with the $300 Switch that weren't already enjoying handheld gaming before that on other handhelds.



Turkish on 14 May 2017
Soundwave said:

This just my feeling now having had the system since launch, and showing it to friends and seeing how they react to it. I think Switch can bring in a "new audience" (for Nintendo), but it's not going to be the typical audience we think of when talking about Nintendo this way, in fact I think it might even surprise Nintendo (just as the PS4's success has surprised Sony in many ways). 

I think the "additive" new audience the Switch is actually going to tap into are older 28-40+ year old gamers people who typically would buy a Playstation or XBox. I'm not talking "lapsed gamers" either, I'm talking about people who can game just fine and have all their lives, they're just older now. The person who bought a Playstation at age 16 in 1996 would today be 36/37, life changes a lot in those 20 years. 

So why Switch? Because the Switch I'm finding the real draw of its design is that it works well for people who love games but don't have the fucking time to game anymore. When you are past 26/27/28, you have a full time job now, are married usually or in a commited relationship that takes up time, you have kids or kids are coming, etc. etc. etc. You have 1000 things sitting on your PVR that you promised you would watch but haven't gotten around to and another 1000 things on Netflix you've been meaning to get around to. 

You love games, but the fact is they are a time consuming and demanding hobby. Enter Switch. No it doesn't have the graphics of a PS4, buuuuut PS3/360 graphics still look decent and can still give you a decent enough game of Skyrim or Zelda or NBA2K or GTAV or MGS. It's such a flexible device that you can get in quick gaming sessions without having to revert back to the 3DS, which lets be honest feels like a toy in comparison to the Switch and doesn't allow for TV gaming (not that you'd want to anyway with that chipset). 

I can actually see Nintendo getting 15-20+ million extra gamers from this category ... what typically would be Playstation or XBox territory, but as you get older, real life sets in and you just don't have the time. This audience has a large amount of disposal income and they do love games so there's no hoops Nintendo needs to jump through, what this audience doesn't have is time. They don' have the time to play games like they did when they were 19 years old. I have a PS4 and XB1 but I just don't have time to play them. It just feels like a chore to go down to the game room, start the system up (which usually entails a firmware update of several minutes) and then settle in, and by that time my fiance is usually yelling at me to check on something. Switch on the other hand, I find little pockets of 15-20 minutes where I can play, no problem (yes even on the toilet, I'm not ashamed to say).

You add that extra userbase to what the 3DS + Wii U sold (subtracting 9 million or so for people who bought both) and you are getting pretty close to that magic 100 million number a lot of people here are obsessed with, also consider every new gen brings in a new generation of kids. 

Nah, people come home after an exhausting day at work, they sit/lie on their sofa in front of their big tv either watching shows or playing games. They might as well get the PS4 which does both netflix and games in the highest definition possible. For games on the go their smart devices will do.

Playstation appeals to every age group. The 90s kids/teens who grew up with it are still with the brand. Mega hits from 1st and 3rd parties that appeal to kids ensure young blood continues flowing in to the ecosystem. The way we grew up with MGS, Tomb Raider and FF7, today's kids grow up with Uncharted, GTA V and CoD.

Nintendo otoh, seems to be stuck with an aging and shrinking demographic of hardcore fans who grew up in the 80s and 90s. Nintendo was unable to bind the huge pool of non-gamers and casuals they got with Wii/DS to their brand. From combined 250 million sold units to barely 80 million.



Rem87919394 on 14 May 2017

I haven't seen or heard anything that would make me put the switch over PS4. Every example you made says PS4 not Switch. Most of the Super Nintendo crowd became the PlayStation crowd. PlayStation has the causal crowd because it has the best all around lineup. The crowd that are in their 30s are the PlayStation crowd. The hardcore Nintendo guys will buy Switch. Wii was more of a gimmick as every Nintendo console dwindled in sales with Wii being the exception. Because they do handhelds well. I expect Switch to sell 60-70 million but it won't compete with PlayStation sales. Just my opinion



Soundwave on 14 May 2017
Turkish said:
Soundwave said:

This just my feeling now having had the system since launch, and showing it to friends and seeing how they react to it. I think Switch can bring in a "new audience" (for Nintendo), but it's not going to be the typical audience we think of when talking about Nintendo this way, in fact I think it might even surprise Nintendo (just as the PS4's success has surprised Sony in many ways). 

I think the "additive" new audience the Switch is actually going to tap into are older 28-40+ year old gamers people who typically would buy a Playstation or XBox. I'm not talking "lapsed gamers" either, I'm talking about people who can game just fine and have all their lives, they're just older now. The person who bought a Playstation at age 16 in 1996 would today be 36/37, life changes a lot in those 20 years. 

So why Switch? Because the Switch I'm finding the real draw of its design is that it works well for people who love games but don't have the fucking time to game anymore. When you are past 26/27/28, you have a full time job now, are married usually or in a commited relationship that takes up time, you have kids or kids are coming, etc. etc. etc. You have 1000 things sitting on your PVR that you promised you would watch but haven't gotten around to and another 1000 things on Netflix you've been meaning to get around to. 

You love games, but the fact is they are a time consuming and demanding hobby. Enter Switch. No it doesn't have the graphics of a PS4, buuuuut PS3/360 graphics still look decent and can still give you a decent enough game of Skyrim or Zelda or NBA2K or GTAV or MGS. It's such a flexible device that you can get in quick gaming sessions without having to revert back to the 3DS, which lets be honest feels like a toy in comparison to the Switch and doesn't allow for TV gaming (not that you'd want to anyway with that chipset). 

I can actually see Nintendo getting 15-20+ million extra gamers from this category ... what typically would be Playstation or XBox territory, but as you get older, real life sets in and you just don't have the time. This audience has a large amount of disposal income and they do love games so there's no hoops Nintendo needs to jump through, what this audience doesn't have is time. They don' have the time to play games like they did when they were 19 years old. I have a PS4 and XB1 but I just don't have time to play them. It just feels like a chore to go down to the game room, start the system up (which usually entails a firmware update of several minutes) and then settle in, and by that time my fiance is usually yelling at me to check on something. Switch on the other hand, I find little pockets of 15-20 minutes where I can play, no problem (yes even on the toilet, I'm not ashamed to say).

You add that extra userbase to what the 3DS + Wii U sold (subtracting 9 million or so for people who bought both) and you are getting pretty close to that magic 100 million number a lot of people here are obsessed with, also consider every new gen brings in a new generation of kids. 

Nah, people come home after an exhausting day at work, they sit/lie on their sofa in front of their big tv either watching shows or playing games. They might as well get the PS4 which does both netflix and games in the highest definition possible. For games on the go their smart devices will do.

Playstation appeals to every age group. The 90s kids/teens who grew up with it are still with the brand. Mega hits from 1st and 3rd parties that appeal to kids ensure young blood continues flowing in to the ecosystem. The way we grew up with MGS, Tomb Raider and FF7, today's kids grow up with Uncharted, GTA V and CoD.

Nintendo otoh, seems to be stuck with an aging and shrinking demographic of hardcore fans who grew up in the 80s and 90s. Nintendo was unable to bind the huge pool of non-gamers and casuals they got with Wii/DS to their brand. From combined 250 million sold units to barely 80 million.

Playstation has appeal to every group sure. 

That doesn't mean there isn't a window there for Nintendo. Sure Sony will have 30-40 year olds too, but there also are more than than a few that I think are going to pass on a PS5.

When you get into your 30s-40s the amount of time, you don't have for a lot of people nearly as much time to game. Switch is something where you can scratch your gaming itch on the 20-25 minutes you have on your subway commute to work or that flight you have on a work conference, and still play a little on the TV when you're at home ... rather than the alternative which is basically quit gaming or just game on smart devices. 

A dedicated home console like a PS5 is only really worth it if you play a lot. I'm seeing this already with a lot of my friends in this age range, they basically just bought a PS4 or XB1 out of habit (because they had the previous ones), but those systems get little use now that they're older and don't have the daily schedule they had at age 25. Honestly I think several of them will just pass on a PS5/XB2, not because Sony/MS are doing anything wrong, it's just not worth it anymore. All they want to do is play a little FIFA or NHL and a couple of other titles these days. 

Most people don't even have time as they get older to watch their Netflix back catalog, let alone spend 60 hours+ on a single video game. That works when you are in your 20s, in your 30s that can get very complicated. Of course some do it, but just as many don't. 

I'm not saying Nintendo needs to get everyone here, but say 15-20 million, that would be less than 10% of the combined XB + PS audience, that I think is doable. That's not an outrageous number. If the sales proposition a few years down the line is a Switch that's about on par with a PS4 (Tegra X3 chip) versus a PS5 with betterer 8k graphics or something, I think Nintendo has a decent shot to actually win a chunk of those gamers. Convienance is going to trump just shinier graphics at some point. 



Turkish on 14 May 2017
Soundwave said:
Turkish said:

Nah, people come home after an exhausting day at work, they sit/lie on their sofa in front of their big tv either watching shows or playing games. They might as well get the PS4 which does both netflix and games in the highest definition possible. For games on the go their smart devices will do.

Playstation appeals to every age group. The 90s kids/teens who grew up with it are still with the brand. Mega hits from 1st and 3rd parties that appeal to kids ensure young blood continues flowing in to the ecosystem. The way we grew up with MGS, Tomb Raider and FF7, today's kids grow up with Uncharted, GTA V and CoD.

Nintendo otoh, seems to be stuck with an aging and shrinking demographic of hardcore fans who grew up in the 80s and 90s. Nintendo was unable to bind the huge pool of non-gamers and casuals they got with Wii/DS to their brand. From combined 250 million sold units to barely 80 million.

Playstation has appeal to every group sure. 

That doesn't mean there isn't a window there for Nintendo. Sure Sony will have 30-40 year olds too, but there also are more than than a few that I think are going to pass on a PS5.

When you get into your 30s-40s the amount of time, you don't have for a lot of people nearly as much time to game. Switch is something where you can scratch your gaming itch on the 20-25 minutes you have on your subway commute to work or that flight you have on a work conference, and still play a little on the TV when you're at home ... rather than the alternative which is basically quit gaming or just game on smart devices. 

A dedicated home console like a PS5 is only really worth it if you play a lot. I'm seeing this already with a lot of my friends in this age range, they basically just bought a PS4 or XB1 out of habit (because they had the previous ones), but those systems get little use now that they're older and don't have the daily schedule they had at age 25. Honestly I think several of them will just pass on a PS5/XB2, not because Sony/MS are doing anything wrong, it's just not worth it anymore. All they want to do is play a little FIFA or NHL and a couple of other titles these days. 

Most people don't even have time as they get older to watch their Netflix back catalog, let alone spend 60 hours+ on a single video game. That works when you are in your 20s, in your 30s that can get very complicated. Of course some do it, but just as many don't. 

I'm not saying Nintendo needs to get everyone here, but say 15-20 million, that would be less than 10% of the combined XB + PS audience, that I think is doable. That's not an outrageous number. If the sales proposition a few years down the line is a Switch that's about on par with a PS4 (Tegra X3 chip) versus a PS5 with betterer 8k graphics or something, I think Nintendo has a decent shot to actually win a chunk of those gamers. Convienance is going to trump just shinier graphics at some point. 

Disagree, people have hours of free time after work. They have more free time at home than commuting. When you're 9-5 you have all evening. Plenty of +30 age people I know come home and crave for a plug n play dedicated machine like the PS4 either for games or series/movies. They get married their wives watch netflix, they get kids their kids ask for CoD or Fifa and the cycle continues. Millions of people watch TV in the evening, prime time is a thing.  Even if they have only 1 hour, thats an episode or 2 of a show or a decent number of online matches. In fact I think Sony said the +30 group is one of their strongest demographic. I think as long as people have homes and TVs, Playstation will always be a thing. With PS Now and PS Vue they've already covered the long term.

That whole commuting argument was played out years ago, people didn't switch over with the DS/PSP, and then came smartphones that were expected to kill consoles. Switch isn't gonna make a difference to the PS install base. People have more responsibilites as they grow yes, but that hasn't negatively affected the Playstation brand in over a decade. Not many people will need an extra device to play games when they have a mobile. Console type games are not short session games so it's not exactly meant for commuting. If I play Zeruda I'd do it for 2-3 hours, when Im 20 minute commuting I'd play some short iOS game or chess. Dont forget that a lot of people buy handhelds and never take it outside, when I buy a Switch it'll be for home use.

I understand what you're saying but I dont see it happening, I want Switch to be successful by taking market share from smart devices, not eating in to console sales.