I want to give the reader a glimpse into the mess Nintendo has got themselves in.
Back in 2004, with the release of the DS (and in 2006 with Wii), Nintendo was in a very bad position. It was threatened on the handheld front with the PSP. The Gamecube was a disaster.
But I want to take you inside the DS and Wii audience’s head for a moment. Here is their perspsective…
Who is the Core Audience for Nintendo? Everyone confuses the Core Audience for Nintendo with fans of these games…
That is not the Core Audience for Nintendo. If anything, that would be more Expanded Market as only young people bought those games. The actual Core Audience for Nintendo are fans of these games:
People forget that Nintendo fans were not first born on the NES. They were actually born in the arcades and on the Atari and Colecovision (and other similar consoles). If you accept this as the original Core Market for Nintendo, then the NES and even SNES make sense. If you loved games like Donkey Kong and its spiritual sequel Mario Brothers, then the game of Super Mario Brothers and its sequels would satisfy you.
Mario wasn’t the only platformer. There was Pitfall. On computere, there were games like Montezuma’s Revenge and Jumpman. The original video game audience gravitated to these particular games. Most of these ended up being the Core Nintendo Audience that was the momentum behind the NES.
Over the decades, this Core Gaming Audience became under served and eventually abandoned. There was less and less reason for this audience to buy future game consoles. Game consoles became defined more by the youth that was buying them. Gamers over forty were no longer present. Soon, female console gamers were no longer present. (Female gamers ended up remaining with PC games since no one made games for them anymore.)
Back in 2005, Reggie said that the future of gaming is dire because the traditional pipeline of youth is not as present. in Japan and Europe, there is actual population decline which slants all sales downward.
The eruption of the DS and, especially the Wii, took everyone off guard including Nintendo. While everyone describes this audience as the ‘new gamer’, as the ‘Expanded Audience’, it was actually the original audience for video games. Just look at the Wii games. You have simple sports. You have PONG remakes. You even have 2d Mario.
The reason why this is the Core Market and not a ‘new’ market is due to how fast it sold. With the example of Super Mario Brothers 5, a new market would have bought the game slowly. New markets are always ‘cold markets’. However, this did not occur. The sales explosion indicates it was a ‘warm market’. It means that there were people waiting for this game for quite some time, and they all rushed to buy it. To give you an idea of how strong a game like Super Mario Brothers 5 was in relation to the world, it is the best selling home console game in Japan in the past twenty five years. There is no way all these new gamers could appear, like overnight, and buy the game at once.
The Core Market for Nintendo is not N64 or Gamecube games. The Core Market for Nintendo is arcade games and NES-esque games.
Nintendo’s console sales were in steady decline until the Wii. Nintendo wasn’t gaining the Core Market with the N64 and Gamecube. Nintendo was losing its Core Market.
The success of the Wii is not the rise of the Expanded Market. It was the return of the original Core Market. Since the Wii and DS were designed to return to the original values of video games, it resulted in the return of that Core Market.
The writer of this post (me) is a real life example of this phenomenon. I loved video games games during the Atari and NES eras. I lost interest sometime during the 16-bit Era. And the DS is my first handheld I’ve bought since the Gameboy. The Wii is the first game console I’ve bought since the SNES.
This is also why Microsoft and Sony were unable to get the ‘Wii audience’ with the Kinect and Move. These are the original gamers. They don’t buy an Xbox 360 or PS3 for the same reason how Nintendo lost them through the N64 and Gamecube.
History is repeating as you can see Nintendo losing this audience with the 3DS. The DS audience is not moving to the 3DS. Why not? For the same reason the NES audience didn’t stick around with the N64 and Gamecube.
So here is why Nintendo is in a worse position today than back in 2004.
This original Core Market trusted Nintendo. They had fond memories of the NES and of Donkey Kong and Mario Brothers. When they got left behind, it was assumed video games were no longer for them. It was assumed video games had to ‘change’ and do totally different things because of the new technology (for example, every game had to become 3d because of the availability of 3d technology).
Today, what I hear from these people is “I will never buy a Nintendo console again.” I have to say I agree with them. The Wii market feels they got shafted by Nintendo.
Let us pretend you bought the Wii for Wii Sports. You assumed that Nintendo would make other motion controlled games. Nintendo didn’t. They made no other motion controlled games. Wii Sports is the only game. The other Nintendo games are Gamecube-esque games, Wii Fit which is different, and Wii Play (which is more of a tutorial of how to use the controller). “There are third party games.” But how can we blame third party games when Nintendo, themselves, refused to make Wii games?
So while people were wondering where the motion controlled games were, in 2008 Nintendo announced Motion Plus. OK. Maybe NOW we would get some games. Nintendo puts out a Wii Sports sequel. OK. Swell enough. Now what? And that’s it.
Above: This video that hyped the Revolution remains unfulfilled. Not even a decent sword fighting game.
It has been nearly three years since Motion Plus was released. Has Nintendo done anything with it? No, they haven’t.
So the Wii audience got screwed in three ways.
-Nintendo refused to make Wii games.
-Nintendo kept making more Gamecube games (the release of Mario Galaxy 2 depressed more people than is known).
-Nintendo made batshit insane games that had nothing to do with the Wii or the Gamecube such as Wii Music.
And now Nintendo expects this Wii audience to buy another console? What on earth are they smoking?
Not only will the Wii audience not buy the next Nintendo console, they no longer trust Nintendo. This is very different from 2004. They used to trust Nintendo. That trust was destroyed during how badly Nintendo handled the Wii. I do not think many of these people will buy a Nintendo console again. They truly do feel ripped off. Hell, I feel ripped off.
Let me try to convince you of just how bad of shape Nintendo is in. Even if Project Cafe is as imagination inspiring, as amazing, as the Wii, as if lightning strikes again (and this is very improbable), the Wii audience will not come. There is no trust! The experience the Wii audience has with Nintendo is that Nintendo makes maybe one or two games they like and then abandons the console. Would you trust any game console company that served you like that?
If you bought the Wii for 2d Mario, you’d be equally as distressed. The 3DS direction would scare you away. You’d look at the control configuration and realize you cannot play 2d Mario with the odd positioning of the D-pad. And even if Nintendo put out the best 2d Mario ever for the 3DS, it would just be one game among a sea of 3d games. Is a 3DS worth buying for one game and one game only? Not at the ridiculous price the 3DS is at.
Gamers are pretty smart. They can see games like Wii Sports and 2d Mario sell. So when Nintendo stops making these types of games, the only action the gamer can do is to just not buy the next console and go find something else to do. Like watch movies or television. At least that is actually fun.
Ever since Nintendo began moving away from the original Core Market, imagine an hourglass that is winding away the sands of time. This is the patience of the original Core Market.
For one brief moment, during the 7th Generation, Nintendo began to move back to the original Core Market. The sales eruptions of the DS and Wii speak for themselves. Nintendo got a 1up.
But it was only a 1up. I am amazed at how everyone is treating the so-called ‘hardcore’ gamers as if they lack patience, as if they are going to bolt unless the next console is served their way. But these ‘hardcore’ gamers never bolt. They even bought the Gamecube! The people who will bolt, and have demonstrated their capacity by already leaving gaming before, is the original Core Market. Yet, these people are talked down as if they are idiots (see the intro to Wii Sports Resort or the tutorials on the Mario Galaxy 2 DVDs).
The reason why Nintendo became a famous video game company and why Shigeru Miyamoto was able to have a career in video games has nothing to do with the N64/Gamecube audience. It has everything to do with the original 1980s Core Market. This market made Nintendo. This market also broke Nintendo. With the DS and Wii, this market also made Nintendo again. Watch how this market will break Nintendo just the same.
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