I remember when Ian wrote gigantic posts about how Nintendo should try to appeal to the mainstream consumer and stop making video games and ads where you "already have to be a gamer" to understand either.
I never did or at least never did in the manner in which you describe. And I'm pretty sure you know that too. Nintendo used to be limited to children and a minority group of gamers open-minded enough to actually give them a chance. I felt they made the best games in the world but due to their poor marketing and bizarre self-defeating incompetence there was a large section of gamers that would enjoy Nintendo games but weren't willing to even try them since Nintendo provided so many superficial reasons to turn that audience off. This was largely the Playstation audience.
I had never thought of the idea of the blue ocean audience. Hell, Nintendo are considered geniuses for targetting this new market. I wouldn't expect myself to come up with such an idea. Like the rest of the industry I only saw who was already there. I just saw tons of Playstation and Xbox owners that ignored Nintendo but I figured Nintendo could win them over if they just stepped back, acknowledged the mistakes they were making and addressed them. Hell I personally wanted these mistakes addressed since they affected me.
The most important part though was that Nintendo was to convert these people to embracing Nintendo's game design philosophies. They were not to compromise those to attract a wider audience. They were to improve their incompetence as console makers and their public image but not change their game design philosophies. But they did just that. They changed to attract the new audience instead of converting the audience.
The ad thing was just that Nintendo ads were such that one had to know the game to even get what the ad was about. It had nothing to do with being a gamer but rather being specifically a Nintendo fan. The only people who would understand the ad would be those already interested in buying the product. I actually feel Nintendo has overall done a very job of addressing this. The "Wii Would Like to Play" ads were very good to describing what Wii Sports is and why you would enjoy it and thus want to buy it.
As Wii owners we should want Nintendo to be hungry for success. Hunger drives improvement. Nintendo has become so successful so quickly with a brand new audience and their competition is so far behind that they're currently no threat. So we complain about friend codes. Has Nintendo addressed this yet? No. Do you think they'll ever? They're not worried about the competition and the new market they owe much of their success to doesn't consider friend codes to be a big issue. So why would they care? Even if they lost us we're not significant enough for it to affect them in the short term.
We see companies get complacent all the time. Atari did. Sony did. Microsoft was in the PC field make when Apple was no threat. EA shifted Madden into neutral once they got the NFL exclusive licence and NFL 2K was no longer a threat. And Nintendo themselves got lazy with success and that's why they lost the top spot with the N64. Unless all this is to you is hometeam rah-rah bragging rights you should never want Nintendo to seem untouchable. No company should be so dominant.
Topic: Wii are... uhhh, Nintendo is #1! Earns title of World's Best Company! (Read 17906 times)
