This time it didn't work. But I think it certainly had a very negative effect on the success of the N64 and Gamecube. Sony and MS used Nintendo's negative image against them and it worked. They manipulated the gaming media and Nintendo was at the bottom because they met the negative exceptations almost exactly. Yeah they're on top now because they targetted a different audience.
Did they "really" target another audience though? I mean, OK, let's just stipulate that everybody who owns Wii Fit is a bona fide casual gamer that will never buy another video game ever and instead cultivate a hobby of cabbage-growing afterward (Which of course, isn;t true, but for the sake of this argument, it is.) That's, say... 20 million users. That leaves 30 million Wii owners who aren't interested in the flagship of casual games. That's no small number by any means, in fact it's exactly the same to slightly higher than the 360 userbase and much higher than the PS3's. Couple this with Nintendo's stable of franchises and several new IPs doing the same or better on Wii, and I'd say they are doing very well in the "traditional" sector. Of course, this changes as definitions change, but I'll get to that in a minute.
An audience that Sony and MS aren't targetting. An audience that the gaming media isn't targetted at. An audience that has only a moderate interest in gaming and thus doesn't even notice when Nintendo does things ass backwards.
I'm not really sure what you are trying to say here. And holy hell yes MS and Sony have been trying to target this "market" with their cameras and simplistic rhythm games. They just usually fail at it so hard that it barely registers on the radar. And I'm not sure what that last sentence means, since every console maker does a few things "ass backwards" (Since this hasn't been stipulated exactly what this is) and nobody who owns any of them seems to care.
Nintendo still has a negative image with the old market. If the new market lost interest or Nintendo actually faced some serious competition in that market wouldn't this image be an issue again? Nintendo strikes me as someone who always lost the race because they showed up without training for it and with their shoelaces tied together but instead of getting their **** together they decided to make their own race where they would be the winners by default because they're the only participant. Which is a pretty clever thinking-outside-the-box idea and it's working but Nintendo never learned why they were losing the race or what they needed to do to actually compete so if someone ever joins their new race and beats them they'll be falling behind out-of-shape with their shoelaces tied together because they never addressed what was holding them back in the first place.
I'm not totally sure you've made your point clear, because the consequence of having this "image problem" before meant last place sales and such, and now it seems to mean "guys on the internet will not like you" and "websites will give you low scores" and "bloggers will make humorous posts before updating about what they found under their couch." Because of the high sales, it seems they got over the image problem of "kiddy" but then a new foe arises that seems taylor-made for this situation. "Casual." I mean think about it, Never before has a console been so popular with adults, real adults from 18-92, but now it's been labeled "casual" for some reason. But then who were all those kiddy-vanquishing rated-M titles aimed at?
You see what I'm getting at here? Even you fell prey to "changing the rules" as you switch from "kiddy image problem" to "wimpy image problem" and then go on about casuals some more. Guess you couldn't win the "kiddy image" race, eh?
In fact, let's look at the DS. Does it have an "image problem?" I don't think so. But in 2004 every website and its mirror was talking up how the DS was only going to be for kids and Nintendo die-hards and nobody else while the PSP will be a hit with the mainstream (Remember when mainstream was desirable, Ian?) and adults. See the labels being applied here? Now after the climactic battle, the dust has settling and the DS has thoroughly vanquished the PSP, mainly through their regular games like "kiddy-voice" Mario, "toony" Zelda, "POKEYMANS," "crippled online" Mario Kart, and the majority of adult portable users playing games like Brain Age, Nintendogs and such (sidenote, a LOT of these adults users play the regular titles too, I mean, otherwise explain the increased sales of all the previous games. Higher userbase? Sure, and that's because...)
When this happened, the sites and press went nuts because the horse they bet on was faltering in the face of random images of mature adults playing DS, exactly counter to what they had predicted. So a new label had to be formed and we've been under this "casual" crap ever since. Notice nobody can say "kiddy" anymore, because it just cannot apply. So now it's this amorphous definition of what is and isn't a game. Which is pretty bad for the labelers, IMHO, because "kiddy" has recognizable and commonly accepted traits. "Casual" and "Hardcore" do not.
Now look at today. The DS has no "image problem." Possibly because the games press seemed to not cover the portable market so much now that there's no "interest" (in other words, no "conflict") And this was tested recently when Sony did this little attack piece on the DSi on the day of it's launch, basically saying "DS is for kids LOL." It was ridiculous and even the websites that pushed PSP were groaning.
So the very same Nintendo that has an "image problem" with the Wii has no "image problem" on the DS. So what's different? Obviously it's the other end, right? So what is the source of the real problem?
And I'll finish with this. You seemed to characterize Nintendo as somebody being bullied and "deserving it" because they apply the label of "nerd" to his behavior and thus he will fit their description of "nerd" every time by simply being who he is. So the obvious solution is to conform to what the bullies want, right? (I never figured you to be one to push conformity, Ian.) And besides, what guarantee does the bullied kid have that they'll stop once he does conform, because he already did that once by conforming to "stop being kiddy," so to speak, and they continued anyway. Bullies seem to have a lot of power here.
Topic: The bookies in. (Read 8227 times)
