Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/rakka/
Reading this report of Nintendo’s record-breaking year of turnover and profits reminded me how much I love Nintendo as a company.
I’ve been a regular, if not fanatical, user of their products for over 15 years. A few years ago, they looked to have lost their way. The Gameboy Advance and Gamecube hadn’t performed too well, and a dominant Sony and emerging Microsoft had already squeezed Sega out of the market. It looked like Nintendo might follow.
What saved them was the qualities I admire most in them; innovation and – above all – enjoyment.
Looking at the most popular games across the Playstation and Xbox (and pc games), you could see the direction in which the market was moving
- Photo-realistic graphics
- Immersive gameplay
- High concept
- Online
- Challenging
- Wide-ranging controls and functionality
These games require incredible amounts of investment – in terms of development costs for the producer and gameplay time for the consumer.
Through the DS and Wii, Nintendo turned this on its head. Their games are
- Easy to learn thanks to intuitive, motion-based controls
- Conducive to short bursts of gameplay around our time-pressured lives
- Simple ideas with the focus on the execution -as this review of Space Invaders attests
- Based around transferable skills – people can learn through playing
- Extended through in-person multiplayer – it is better to make your opponent cry, but it is best to see them cry
- Focused on fun
These factors combined can create fanatical devotion that can spread through word of mouth – not only saving marketing budget but also extending the word to the casual gamers.
And so Nintendo created a new market.
My Mother – who only learned to send text messages last year and still can’t email – now has a Wii. Two of the games she plays – Wii Sports and Wii Fit – are pretty much the equivalent of what you get on MiniCip, whereas Wii Fit actually gives some tangible benefit to her.
Games with face-to-face social benefits, games that are primarily fun, and games that lead to benefits or changes to lives as a whole. Is this the direction the industry is going in?
Of course the sandbox style of Grand Theft Auto has proved incredibly popular, but what have been the breakout franchises of the past couple of years? Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
As McCann’s Subodh Deshpande so succinctly put:
Nintendo has succeeded with the DS and Wii because, unlike its competition, it did not view the gaming business through the lens of graphic wizardry but through the eyes of human beings
sk
Filed under: gaming, usability | Tagged: nintendo, nintendo ds, nintendo wii, social gaming, sony playstation, xbox | 1 Comment »
Curiously Persistent 