I find it amusing that it is somehow less plausible for a person playing Wii Fit or Wii Sports to graduate up the game design food chain than for a person who bought the PS3 as a Blu-Ray Player to suddenly switch media types and play upmarket games right off the bat.

Why do you think they do not support FE and Advance wars? Neither of them sell. Fire Emblem hasn't made 1M in the last 10 years, and Advance wars is even worse.

blue ocean... red sea... is obvious, you dont even need to ask the question. soon they will rule all our water ways, they will control shipping and fishing and charge Australia an even biger import tax on using their oceans!!! :'(

advance wars has had huge TV ad campaigns in the past, the main problem is that a lot of people don't like heavy strategy games with simplistic graphics. also what better way to advertise fire emblem in the US than to put characters in smash bros.?

 But, nobody said that.  The opinion presented in this article is that Nintendo does not produce and support these "upmarket" games enough.

That's somewhat true, as Nintendo sticks mostly around the "middle tier" of games, as described in the article.   But they have a few games like Fire Emblem and Zelda that are more of the "third tier."  And who knows what else they may come up with?

The blogger that responds to Malstrom article was SERIOUSLY WRONG... VERY VERY WRONG. In reality, theres no games had been cater to the third tiers because third tiers "isnt existed" yet, theyre the unknown. If you read disruption sword you know it very well as a matter of fact, the core gamers only classified to first tiers, first tiers related to the people who knows gaming but dont want to play it or people who dont play anymore, and the people who enjoys gaming since their childhood(core gamers)...

The second tier refers to the non gaming crowd, this what Wii Fit ties in, since its not really a game but more of a exercise machine, Ninty wants to cater to this crowd. Unlike what SONY and MS did that only caters to the first tiers especially the core gamer ones.

The third tier was unknown. WHY? Because Ninty was the only one catered to the non gamer crowd, theyre the first to cater to it with Wii Fit.

Did the author not read all of the Blue Ocean strategy?   Moving up market is a part of it.  Sorry if it's taking longer than he wants it to but it's moving north.

Tenchu 4, 5 and 6
Fatal Frame IV
Madworld
Conduit
and on..
and on...
and on....

They do support those series. They were made for the Wii in the first year, even before the first Wii Mario game. That's support. And FE never sold 1 million. The bestselling of them was about 700-800k. The Wii FE game is about 500k. That's selling pretty well. The Nintendo Wars games also sell about as well as most niche generes. Niche genres are almost never million sellers, but they have consistent fanbases, so almost always make money (since the game rarely cost more than a few million).

The Blue Ocean itself has 3 tiers.

Nintendo has only moved up to the second tier so far.

We need to do away with this idea that the entire new market exists downmarket of the entire old market, and that by moving upmarket Nintendo will start making more traditional games. This is not the case.

As yushire said, in a moment of understanding Malstrom, the first tier was fringe gamers. The fringe gamers caused the explosive launch of Wii. These people were the most overserved by the old market, but they were still interested in gaming on some level, and so they were the most quickly excited by Wii. We know fringe gamers fueled the early going because of the sales of Mario Party 8 and Mario and Sonic, which non-gamers would not care about.

The second tier starts with Wii Fit. Think for a second: Wii Sports comes with a console. Wii Play comes with a Wiimote. They each just have a handful of games. They serve no practical purpose. Meanwhile, Wii Fit costs $90. It comes with a dedicated peripheral. It has far more games than Sports or Play. It serves a practical purpose, which demands better performance than Sports or Play. It is upmarket of Sports and Play. And, it is built to excite non-gamers. Nintendo views non-gamers--those who previously totally rejected gaming--as being upmarket of fringe gamers.

The third tier will involve aggressively moving into traditionally non-gaming markets. We don't know how Nintendo will do this yet.

This is all Blue Ocean. The Blue Ocean will create a new high-end market just as it created a new low-end market. Stop looking for mere IR or motion controlled versions of old games with old values.

The bridge games bring gamers over to the new market from the old. There may eventually be some FPS or RPG bridge games, but much of the hardcore will reject them like they have past bridge games, notably MK Wii. They see all new market values as being downmarket. There could be an amazing FPS game for Wii, with tons of gameplay and the best controls ever, but they will reject it because it focuses on social play, specialized controllers or even a practical purpose, instead of graphics, storyline or "owning" people online.

 Oh, he is. He's also an arrogant a**hole and many other things. But he also knows what he's talking about, so if you ever have a day to spare I do suggest going through his site.

As for the response, it seems to me like the author didn't really think about his article too much before he wrote it. As many of you have already pointed out, Fire Emblem and Advance Wars were supported plenty at launch, but turn-based strategy games are something of a niche in this country. The only exception I can think of to that involves titles called "Final Fantasy."

The lack of Earthbound does irk me, but considering the game flopped despite its (then) record amount of advertising may indicate that we net nerds aren't representative of the general population. Meanwhile, Nintendo's been pumping out the Marios, Zeldas, and Metroids in record time, which is why some are already (mistakenly) saying that Nintendo's emptied out its cupboard.  No, I'm thinking Nintendo's showed plenty of support for the traditional gamer, and unless I'm much mistaken their output on this level is only going to increase with time (F-Zero plz!)