How Hardcore Gamers Fell Out of Love With Nintendo
It’s far from a secret that Nintendo’s marketing focus has shifted in emphasis over the last few years. After hitting the market with user friendly gaming, Nintendo realised a new segment of the market to give its attention.
It’s also a well published proclamation that this manoeuvre, however prudent it later became, has left Nintendo much less capable of making their mark in the ‘core’ gaming demographic. It could be debated the ‘casual’ gaming market as it stands will be short lived, or that this kind of gaming is here to stay and Nintendo will be at the forefront of casual gaming for ever more. This, however, is not what was intended for this discussion.
How did this happen in the first place? Did Nintendo just decide to ignore the core gamer demographic, or is it the core gamer that fell out of love with Nintendo?
Note: This graph is not necessarily an accurate representation of the implied statistics.
With the exception of Wii, every home console Nintendo has released has sold less globally than its predecessor. The competition in the market has increased dramatically over this time, and Nintendo has suffered because of it. From dominance to desperation, Nintendo was losing market share and shareholders. These years of declining market share prompted Nintendo to make a bold move and venture into uncharted territory in hope of uncovering a new market.
But where did this decline really take off? The market remained relatively stable throughout the NES and SNES generations, with little progression in market trends. The real shake up was introduced by the release of PlayStation, which expanded the market considerably and lifted the boundaries that previous hardware had kept in place. As a result, people wanted more from their games, and the type of gaming Nintendo were promoting at the time was not easily marketable in this new climate. No pre-rendered graphics, plumbers still jumping down pipes and no attempt at ‘realism’. It was, perhaps, these things that drove gamers away from Nintendo, in pursuit of more matured experiences. It could be said that gamers started falling out of love with Nintendo in the mid-90’s.
This trend continued throughout the life of N64 and Gamecube, where other formats were perceived as offering more of what the gamer wants… and they were. This trend has a spiral effect, in that people buy a system, the market is on that system, games go to that system and more people buy that system as a result. This took effect from N64’s inception to the death of the Gamecube, and this is exactly what pushed Nintendo to uncover new markets.
Nintendo has never been able to recover from the effect that Playstation had on the market, making Nintendo formats a hostile place for the core gamer and publishers alike. Even with output of such a high calibre as their core franchises have been offering for many years, it seems Nintendo cannot get Wiimotes in the hands of core gamers.
If there is a reason for “How Nintendo fell out of love with hardcore gamers”, It’s because they fell out of love with Nintendo first.
December 2nd, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Remember the back of the NES Action set package? If not it showed a family having fun with Super Mario Bros; the classics mom, dad and cool son and look at this:
http://www.gamersgraveyard.com/repository/nes/peripherals/images/family-fitness-box-back.jpg
So my point is: What numbers did you use to make that graphic? Is there any official statement about the number of “casual” or “hardcore” users on a console?
December 3rd, 2008 at 12:57 pm
The graph wasn’t supposed to be accurate at all, hence the lack of numbers or even a y-axis descriptor. It was just to show that sales have been decreasing for some time.
The article was more to do with how the consumer’s attitude has changed towards Nintendo, rather than how their approach to the industry has changed.
December 5th, 2008 at 1:30 am
In other words Wollfs, per your last comment here, the graphic you use to support your entire thesis is made up out of wholecloth? Probably not the best choice of diagram to make your point.
I don’t doubt that the actual sales of the console might mirror your chart (in fact they do) but without any references to back up your assertions I have no reason to believe it. It’s a dangerous journalistic practice (and I know this is just a blog, but still…) to put-up a pseudo-chart like that unless it’s contents are obviously satirical or nonsensical (i.e The Onion). While the title of “Nintenfail” gestures in this direction, it still looked accurate enough for me to think it correct until alfredofroylan brought the subject up. What’s ironic is that the actual information is but a wikipedia trip away. I put the real info into a chart and it came out similar to your conjecture but not exact. (The decline of sales between N64 and Gamecube was consistent with the previous rate of decline between consoles; whereas in your graph, the falling off levels out somewhat with the Gamecube.) Interestingy enough, the Wii sales figures reverse this trend reflectively, putting Nintendo’s newest console at about the same point as N64. Of course, the Wii is still young and is bound to sell many many more units before it’s shelf life is through. (I’d post the graph on here but I don’t think this blog format will let me.)
It’s not a big deal, but, a caption explaining the contents of the chart, and warning that they were not based on fact, would have been welcome. Good article otherwise-though without numbers (statistics again!) proving that hard-core gamers are rejecting Nintendo I have suspicions that this particualar meme, spread in the echochamber of the internet, is more about perception then reality. After all, the big Nintendo franchises, always the companys bread and butter, are hardly poor sellers and the Wii, with it’s massive sales, is being purchased by more than few hardcore gamers. I wonder if any accurate statistical sampling has even been taken? I doubt it.
December 5th, 2008 at 1:48 am
Yeh, that was a mistake. But it was simply to illustrate something that I assumed was very common knowledge among the people I thought would see this post. I underestimated how far it would travel, won’t do that again. I’ll add a caption to the graph stating it is not based on actual figures.
Your feedback is most definitely appreciated. Many thanks
December 8th, 2008 at 1:23 am
[...] An article written by Hide and Geek’s Woffls caused a bit of a stir in the week, whilst numerous sites seemed to miss the point entirely, gaygamer.net took the time to read the article properly and posted an insightful response to the matter. The ‘Nintendo doesn’t care about me‘ argument has got incredibly stale over the last year or so, and it should be reinforced that this was not the point of this particular article. [...]