fkusumot said:
kn - It's all entertainment. Since your anecdotal evidence involves elementary school kids I'll note a corollary in the music industry. To wit, how does popularity with the younger generation (pre-teen) translate into continued popularity?
The simple answer is the popularity usually does not carry over. When it does then you get a big winner. For instance The Beatles started out as a "fad" or what I think is better described as a "cultural phenomenon". The Beatles place in history was primarily carved out (IMHO) because they carried over their pre-teen audience into the teens, and from the teens into adulthood. Very few musical bands/groups manage to do that, to keep appealing to a generation as it moves from childhood into adulthood and simultaneously pick up new fans (which keeps it from becoming niche). It's a magic formula. For perhaps the best earlier example see Sinatra and how the bobby soxers followed him into adulthood.
There are several historical examples of how the gaming cultural phenomenons work out. You can look at the rise and fall of the card game "Bridge" in America. Bridge was a staple "party game" from the 1930's well into the 1960's and then started falling out favor for one reason or another. Chess had a huge expansion in the USA starting in 1972, directly attributable to Bobby Fischer, and has had a slow decline since then. "Trivial Pursuit" was one of the big hits of the 1980's and the trivia genre has been present in gaming since then. For the last ten or so years we've had Poker and now more specifically Texas Hold'em as one of the biggest winners in gaming. Things go in and out of fashion... but why?
Nintendo has a history as a consistently profitable gaming company for over 100 years. The Hanafuda cards that Nintendo makes have been declining in popularity recently but you can still find a deck of cards for sale in a 7-11 in Japan. Nintendo is a gaming company and has failed famously with attempts to diversify. Their strength is gaming.
Part of Nintendo's success is the "E" for everyone philosophy. Parents buy games for their kids that they know and trust, a lot of times the same games they played when they were young. Parents will also pick up games that they can play with their kids. That's part of the reason why Hanafuda is still around. In the USA there are similar games like Monopoly, Old Maid, Go Fish and Chess/Checkers. I believe Nintendo's strategy is the same: to make games that have cross-generational appeal and to continue to be a "brand" that indicates to the consumer that it's kid safe.
Nintendo has branched out in certain genres with more sophisticated games with darker themes but that's not going to be their emphasis. The more mature themed games will overwhelmingly be 2nd or 3rd party efforts. Nintendo will continue to concentrate on the cross-generational strategy, and will win or lose based on that.
So to answer your original question, Nintendo does want to have carry over from the pre-teen to the teen and into adulthood. That carry over is a big factor in the short-term. Nintendo's real strategy is longer term than that. What they want is 20 and 30 years down the road those kids that you were polling to be buying a Nintendo product for their own kids. |
Seriously.
With their Nintendo magic they have completely owned the platformer genre that Miyamoto created and I'm never going to grow out of hitting ? blocks and getting mushrooms and flowers. If people think they're "growing out of it" then they're definitely not "growing up" at all. Nintendo will win the generation with their own games, and the 3rd parties will flock to their Nintendomination and flesh out the rest of the genres Nintendo doesn't dabble in, and the Wii will have everything ever, including all the ridiculous new innovations we've never seen like Wii Fit.
If you want to train your brain, or your body, or have kart racing, or platforming, or 4-p platform/fighting (whatever you want to call Brawl if you're too scared to call it a fighter as it outsells SF2 and is the best-selling fighter ever), weird fishing/shopping/interior-decorating games (Animal Crossing), you have nowhere to go but Nintendo. There is no competitionin these genres because NINTENDO CREATES THEM.
There are certain sounds that have just infiltrated the entire universe, like the 1-up sound or the "secret" sound from Zelda. One day at my old job, I was carrying boxes into a basement with thin walls, and in one of the adjacent offices I could hear a sound, and I swear my heart skipped a beat. I could immediately tell it was the sound of somebody running full speed in SMB3, just about to jump and start flying. I couldn't find the office, but I wanted to jump through the wall Kool-Aid Man style and give the stranger a high 5 for bringing a NES to work. There are other games I love, I even love GTA, but when I find a stranger playing GTA I don't want to jump through walls and high-5 them. Those games don't have the timeless Nintendo magic. In 40 years I'll be over GTA and playing whatever new gangster/hooker/cabdriving/shoot'em'up game is on the market, but I'll still be playing SMB3 and Tetris and Wii Sports.
When I have kids they're going to be educated on the timeless things like Mario and the Beatles. I'm not gonna say "Hey son, you want to play Madden/Halo/GTA? It was the best selling game of year 20XX."
I'm going to say "Son, this is the game that taught me how to fuck up aliens. If the aliens ever attack our house and I save you and mom, thank this game." And turn on X-COM: UFO DEFENSE. I really have this all planned out.
(I don't know how to quote 2 boxes in one message. How do I do that?)
@Gamerace, for your "Nintendo games generally lose some appeal as kids turn into teens who generally like to blow the crap out of things."
That's bullshit. I've been playing Nintendo since before I could read, and I'm 25 now. I know you're down with the controller revolution, but that statement just stinks of the "2 types of Nintendo fans argument."
There are 2 kinds of Nintendo fans. Well... 3 now if you include the "casual revolution" or "non-gamers" or the marginalizing term of your choice. But the main 2 have always allegedly been "kids who will grow up and move on" and "diehard fanboys." Call me a diehard fanboy if you want, but I'd prefer to call myself a fanboy of innovation, and Nintendo's the only one who brings it this hard. Nintendo is the only company who looks at every aspect of gaming and changes the actual way we play it, with a D-Pad, analog stick, rumble, wirelessness, motion controls, IR pointing, speaker-in-the-controller, balance board, and who knows what's next. Other console manufacturers pump up the strength and add random non-gaming features that don't affect my gaming experience, so I don't care.
The fact that Nintendo has the best gaming interface revolutions AND the best timeless gaming experiences... that's just amazing. Nintendo is games. Everybody else is just business trying to make computers and TVs and DVD players and OS's and music players and "dancing audioplayers" and robots and oh yeah, some games too, 'cuz they want to make everything ever. Nintendo makes one thing: games, and they're the motherfucking best at it.
(I tried their ramen and love hotels and was unsatisfied. I'm glad they regained their gaming focus with Yokoi/Miyamoto/Iwata.)
