Wow. Not very subtle is he? XD
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Nintendo's Iwata: "Our approach to targeting children has been inadequate"
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
Wow. Not very subtle is he? XD
Not an expert Japanese reader, but if I'm not mistaken the first one just says "Approach to kidssssss!" and displays a naked Iwata...I think the meaning is obvious
The second says "The non-buying Nintendofan is the usual Nintendo fan"...
It seems that for some reason people in those forums think that Nintendo fans ("Ninton" or just "ton" 豚 like here) never buy shit ...m'kay
A reference to how hardcore audiences are dismissing the WiiU perhaps?
ZombiePlatypus
Member
Eh, I don't mind them making more kid-friendly titles, so long as the polish, quality and content for older players is still there. Hopefully, they'll end up ramping up their variety though.
Regardless of it all, I think people are way too quick to wanna sack Iwata here. Last thing we need is to bring someone else in that'll either A) Turn Nintendo into mobile factory, or B) Go all try-hard appealing to western audiences with "edgy" shoot-shoot bang crap.
That's definitely one route.
Oh god Iwata's face in the first one. Dead.
Regardless of it all, I think people are way too quick to wanna sack Iwata here. Last thing we need is to bring someone else in that'll either A) Turn Nintendo into mobile factory, or B) Go all try-hard appealing to western audiences with "edgy" shoot-shoot bang crap.
That's definitely one route.
Saw these gems on that jin115 board:
What do they say?
Oh god Iwata's face in the first one. Dead.
Gentleman Jack
Member
ch boards seldom trade on subtlety
Nintendo has the infrastructure and know-how for pretty much the main functions of a tablet: multimedia and a content delivery method. Certainly they have developers who have OS-level programming skills, not to mention application-level, to rework the Android base since they've been designing the OS for all of their systems. Amazon's other businesses really have nothing to do with the Kindle Fire's success.
The questions about a Nintendo tablet comes down to:
- Why are parents buying tablets for their kids?
- What are the primary requirements that parents are looking for when buying a tablet for their kids?
- What are the throwaway features of existing tablets that parents do not care for or would object to?
Starting with these, Nintendo should be able to figure out a strategy for a tablet product.
ioriyagami
Member
Nope, just a wrong translation (like I said, I started to be able to read some Japanese very recently). I edited my previous post because I think the translation would be something like this:
買わねえ豚は-> the non-buying Nintendo fan
ただの豚だ -> is just a pig
I think is just playing with the two meanings 豚 have in that forum. Being the most common the abbreviation of 任豚 ("Ninton", or how Nintendo fans are called in Japan) and just 豚 ("ton", "buta" or pig)
EDIT: It seems is a meme used everywhere in Japanese forums. I think it comes from Porco Rosso's quote: "A pig that doesn't fly is just a pig". lol, would be nice to hear a confirmation about the meaning and origins of that meme from someone more "versed" on Japanese forums
soviet prince
Member
amen
TheAngryMonkey
Member
They need to show why their solution is better than the other options. The Nest thermostat isn't the first or only programmable or internet connected thermostat on the market. But they're charging top dollar and doing really well.
Nintendo needs to show kids and their parents as well as other gamers why the system is for them. Marketing is key to this.
To me, their marketing goes like this:
Kids
- Easy, show them games and remind them every time the games are available only on Nintendo
- Advertise this message where the kids are
Parents
- Tell parents their kids want to play games and they want to play the best games, only on Nintendo
- Educate parents that they can join in with their kids, show how gaming brings the family together
- Educate parents that this console allows them to control all aspects of the system including online interaction, enforce game ratings and track usage of each child. Fundamentally parents want to be good ones, this feeds to that. Also, as far as I know, only Wii and Wii U have such strong parental controls
- Slip in some messaging that just because it's family friendly doesn't mean it doesn't grow with you as a gamer, adults will find content they like to (Ghosts, ACIV, Splinter Cell or what ever else)
Lastly, core gamers and this is where they're going to struggle no matter what. Their online and communication capabilities are just too weak, but maybe Nintendo can use the rest of this gen to improve the situation. Xbox wasn't amazing on day one either.
Core Gamers
- Showcase without a hint of "this thing is primarily for families"
- Showcase what online capabilities exist and that they are free
- Showcase why Wii U is better than the other options because it plays all of those old Nintendo titles you love and the new ones (this of course assumes they fix VC and very quickly) and for less
D
Deleted member 17706
Unconfirmed Member
妊娠 is a mistaken character conversion of にんしん＝任信（short for 任天堂信者
. They're pronounced the same and it stuck because its kind of funny.So, no, that character isn't supposed to be Iwata. It's supposed to be a Nintendo fanboy.
jim-jam bongs
Member
Such a creepy thread title.
You know, when it comes to Western advertising, the children explaining the Wii U to their parents in that commercial this past holiday was a step in the right direction. I think they're starting to understand the message they need to send to parents: the joy of seeing your kids play games you know they'll love and don't have to worry about content-wise.
I think they should go a step further and make a really minimalist ad-campaign consisting of real footage of families playing games together. Show brothers playing Mario together, show sisters playing Pokemon together, show mom and dad playing Wii Bowling with them and having fun. Real people with real reactions having real fun.
Slather that campaign all over the airwaves during family tv time. I'm talking Modern Family, during Parks and Rec, during Dancing with the Stars.
I think they should go a step further and make a really minimalist ad-campaign consisting of real footage of families playing games together. Show brothers playing Mario together, show sisters playing Pokemon together, show mom and dad playing Wii Bowling with them and having fun. Real people with real reactions having real fun.
Slather that campaign all over the airwaves during family tv time. I'm talking Modern Family, during Parks and Rec, during Dancing with the Stars.
jim-jam bongs
Member
"I'd trust me with your children, you should too", he grinned as he stuffed the toddler into a mushroom sack.
Nope.
This is addressing a non-existent problem. Kids weren't stupid in our day and they aren't stupid now; parents don't need to wonder about what games their kids will love. They know because their kids are telling them. They're spelling it out, and the letters coming out of their mouths don''t form "Wii U."
They form:
Minecraft!
Xbox!
PS4!
Call of Duty!
The only parent that your strategy caters to is the "parent who doesn't listen to their kid and instead wastes hundreds of dollars on consoles their kids have made clear they don't want." And that audience has never really existed. Not in any significant number that will benefit Nintendo, anyway.
Nintendo's ads this year highlighted the very problem that will doom them: insisting that the industry should be one way when all logic and reason is screaming that it's really another way.
megabytecr
Member
They have to be humble and recognize they are not in a bubble. With indies, casual mobile games, social networks and the internet it is a fast paced market. They need to have a team focus on trends, big hits and learn a bit from those and why not improve from those. That is why I say they have to be humble. You don´t have to be always the innovator to have success.
So why is this relevant? I mean kids are growing with all those things I mentioned at the start, that is why they need to pay closer attention to the trends.
Some of this are crazy ideas
Minecraft, why not have a special version with Nintendo lore.
CoD: they need to have a competitive FPS in the system. Nintendo needs its Halo (Basically the CoD/Pokemon diagram of intended vs actual target)
Counter Strike: would be cool to get it in the system and add some Nintendo themed maps. Although not sure this is what kids play lol.
For the handheld they need to release more smaller sized games or another pricing model.
So why is this relevant? I mean kids are growing with all those things I mentioned at the start, that is why they need to pay closer attention to the trends.
Some of this are crazy ideas
Minecraft, why not have a special version with Nintendo lore.
CoD: they need to have a competitive FPS in the system. Nintendo needs its Halo (Basically the CoD/Pokemon diagram of intended vs actual target)
Counter Strike: would be cool to get it in the system and add some Nintendo themed maps. Although not sure this is what kids play lol.
For the handheld they need to release more smaller sized games or another pricing model.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
No they lost marketshare then for the same reason as now. They in essence don't know what the market wants. This is why the Wii was such a success. Right product for the right time. Most of the time wrong product.
They've had marketshare siphoned from them by Sony, but people overstate by how much. Consoles grew by tens of millions of units from the prior generation. This is because Sony saw a market that wasn't be serviced properly in gaming and met their needs. This is how MS and Nintendo in turn pulled users from Sony after the PS2.
pieatorium
Member
Yep marketing to parents for kids is going to hit the smallest part of their market, if kids dont want it they will be 100% up front about it and if theirs nothing in it for the parents then thats some useless marketing.
I see those adds as basically the same as nintendo directs, preaching to the choir.
Nocturno999
Member
It's very different designing games for kids than targeting the current children audience.
They are not as delusional as some people think.
They are not as delusional as some people think.
keisuke999
Member
Late to the party I know, but this: 子どもたちへのアプローチが十分ではなかった means: Our approach to children was not sufficient.
As in, they want appeal MORE to children.
source: Japanese is my first language. Sorry for being late, I'm at work now
As in, they want appeal MORE to children.
source: Japanese is my first language. Sorry for being late, I'm at work now
Kid would you like to play with my Wii?
TheFLYINGManga_Ka
Member
I think they should be pretty happy the 3ds is still doing well. It's not that their target audience and marketing toward kids hasn't been good, it's just ios has taken over. It is what it is. That's not Nintendo's fault.
So many kids now talk about Minecraft and Angry Birds. At least Pokemon is still popular.
So many kids now talk about Minecraft and Angry Birds. At least Pokemon is still popular.
Always-honest
Banned
Create the most NFC addictive game in history.
Nfc pokemon incoming.
Nobody should argue that Mario or Pokemon are somehow childish games because of their difficulty or mechanics, these games require as much skill as any Call of Duty, Battlefield, Fifa game. Under the hood, there is nothing "kiddy" about Nintendo games.
But there is absolutely no doubt that most Nintendo games have astheticts that are meant to appeal to children, Its not a "well thats like, your opinion!", universally their characters have soft features, simple design and the characters and the worlds they inhabit are colorful. Nintendo games arent "kiddy" under the hood, but the paintjob absolutely is.
I cannot think of another company that creates hardware and software that tries harder than Nintendo to appeal to children. The few expections to the rule (mainly Metroid) are just that, exceptions to the rule.
Personally i dont mind the childish asthetics, i dont want realistic Mario or anything, but i hope they dont dumb the games "under the hood", what they did with Skyward Sword was a travesty, flodded the game with endless tutorials and helper character that ruined the game for me.
But there is absolutely no doubt that most Nintendo games have astheticts that are meant to appeal to children, Its not a "well thats like, your opinion!", universally their characters have soft features, simple design and the characters and the worlds they inhabit are colorful. Nintendo games arent "kiddy" under the hood, but the paintjob absolutely is.
I cannot think of another company that creates hardware and software that tries harder than Nintendo to appeal to children. The few expections to the rule (mainly Metroid) are just that, exceptions to the rule.
Personally i dont mind the childish asthetics, i dont want realistic Mario or anything, but i hope they dont dumb the games "under the hood", what they did with Skyward Sword was a travesty, flodded the game with endless tutorials and helper character that ruined the game for me.
Late to the party I know, but this: 子どもたちへのアプローチが十分ではなかった means: Our approach to children was not sufficient.
As in, they want appeal MORE to children.
source: Japanese is my first language. Sorry for being late, I'm at work now
Indeed, there is no "targeting" in the Japanese sentence.
TheBaldEmperor
Member
"Hey there little boy! I've got some puppies in my van over here if you want to see them!"
*shows Nintendogs*
*boy kicks Nintendo official in the nuts*
The_Endgamer
Member
Didn't Yamauchi want Nintendo to develop an anime part of business for Nintendo IPs during the Gamecube era?
This would have fixed this problem and built a good legacy for keeping long dead IPs alive and to gauge interest for upcoming releases.
This would have fixed this problem and built a good legacy for keeping long dead IPs alive and to gauge interest for upcoming releases.
I think there is a misconseption that games for kids needs to have lover difficulties. When I was a kid most of the games were harder than todays games made for adults.
Simple :
1. lack of knowlegde.
2. having a mobile became a common thing, who didn't saw a kid of 7 years of with a mobile ?
So that's not Nintendo main fault if "whales"/commoners don't know about their games. It's because these people don't bother at all to know a thing about video games.
Just take a look at this, it's from Forbes :
So if you want people know you then you've to go to them otherwise they will not bother to do something else outside their confort zone.
TreasureHunterG
Banned
Man, are you really serious about all of this? REALLY?
Nintendo was already very child/family driven before this statement. Their games have aesthetics very appealing to this audience and Nintendo is viewed as a "kiddy company" in the general gaming world eyes, both for the costumers and the developers. It's also a key reason for why Nintendo lost market share ever since the SNES/Genesis generation, a breach that Sega managed to use to antagonize Nintendo and persuade their former NES base to buy the Genesis. Remember the notorious "Genesis does what Nintendon't"? This was the start of Nintendo's market share loosing. Sony went even further, aware of how this "kiddy image" was negative for Nintendo and adopted the same strategy to take more of Nintendo's market.
NoA tried to damage control this image by allowing second-parties to make games toward the Teen/Mature audience, hence the N64 managed to keep the SNES audience in the US. After Iwata took the office, he decided to end those productions and Microsoft successfully managed to grab the N64's teen/mature audience.
Persisting this kiddy approach, given Nintendo's history, isn't a good idea at all, it'll only manage to shrink Nintendo's market even more and repel more gamers from buying it.
Nintendo since DS and Wii has been targeting non gamers, old people, moms, dads, grandpa and grandmas. Maybe that's what his quote is all about. They need to focus more on children (gamers) and not seniors who tried out the Wii, bought one but have zero interest to invest on a new console.
While the analysis is on point you must realize that this is exactly what Nintendo claimed they were trying to do with the Wii U. So we should move the discussion on to where they misfired and since they said they are sticking with the Wii U what needs to be done to generate interest with their current hardware.
In the past I have made a lot of suggestions on their software development so I won't bother doing that here because software development takes time and they need more immediate (within 8 months) results.
Since a lot of children are playing on tablets Nintendo has to be very smart in ensuring those games correctly tell children where bigger and better games can be found and they need to be able to ensure they can be discovered in the major app marketplaces because it can be tough.
For adults they need to think hard about what type of adult they want to reach out to and who would be easier to convince to buy a Nintendo console.
With the lower specs of the Wii U Nintendo has already hurt their chances with those who would prefer Sony or even MS at $500 to the Wii U's $300.
But Nintendo could win gamers over who prefer the online environment of MS and Sony because their online infrastructure isn't tied to their console hardware. Their online gaming is free. Nintendo has to demonstrate why their online gaming is atleast better than Microsoft's and buy up 3rd party games that are only about online play like Titanfall (preferably exclusive).
For adults who aren't salivating over new consoles like early adopters but still have a general interest Nintendo needs to be communicating better their price advantage and game selection since they won't be too picky but they need to be treated as valuable and wanted.
Not giving a fuck. Their moms are more important.
Core gamers are interested in consoles and Nintendo is probably a few years off from revealing their next one.
Core gamers are interested in games....core games, Nintendo is losing all third party support for these, and they don't have a single western studio besides Retro that does these type of games. Im quite surprised that no one asked this.....i mean they need new Retro and Rare type of studios....they think that having specific deals here and there will solve the issue.....
If they're going to make moves like that I would expect them to be done over the next few years while they design/develop their next console and Iwata didn't want to tell us what they are spending their money on(though he did mention fixing their weaknesses).
Haha. No, I mean the gamer who knows about gaming, developers, gameplay mechanics and wants 'more' from their games.. As opposed to those who don't care about tech, or gameplay or how their games are sold to them, they just want to tap to kill some time. When most people start out in something they are unsophisticated until they really get into it.
Lufiaddict
Member
I do think so. Like others (such as Tiktaalik), I suggest the creation of a new portable system. Here's what I came up with:
Nintendo could release, as a third pillar, a dirt cheap portable system. Under 50$ if possible (it would still have to be sold for a small profit).
Hardware:
- Size: somewhere between the original GBA and GBA micro. In any case, small enough to fit in a pocket.
- Colorful and sturdy casing (many color schemes available).
- Touch screen. Relatively big and scratch resistant.
- D-pad, two face buttons ('red' and 'green') and 'menu' button (no analog stick nor shoulder buttons).
- Some motion sensing capabilities would be neat if that's not too costly.
- Cheap speakers and volume control.
- CPU, RAM, GPU etc: the best they could do for the price. Of course, this would be a weak machine only capable of 2D.
- SD card slot.
- ON / OFF button, battery, and all the other necessary little things I might have forgotten.
- No WiFi, no camera etc.
Software:
- All the games would be free and could be downloaded from Nintendo's website.
- The games would just have to be put on an SD card to be played on the system. Parents are already used to this, remember the R4!
- There would be lots of very simple minigames such as those found on NSMB DS or WarioWare. Some longer, more complex games might also be possible.
- Third parties and indie games would be welcome. Games could be submitted to Nintendo. Only those deemed good enough by Nintendo would be available on the official site.
- Nintendo games would of course feature Mario, Link, Pokemons etc.
- Operating system: not much to speak of. When you turn the system on, the list of games appears. *shrug*
Purpose:
- This system would be cheap enough that lots of kids would get one even if they already have a smartphone or tablet.
- Its low price and its lack of network connection and camera would make it a harmless toy that parents would feel totally safe to let in the hands of their children.
- Its simplicity would make it accessible to anyone, young or old, just like the NES and Game Boy were.
- By playing with this toy, kids would familiarize themselves with Nintendo characters, buttons and d-pad, and Nintendo-quality gameplay. Many of them might later want to graduate to the "true" gaming systems such as the 3DS and Wii U's successors.
Marketing:
- Nintendo could pretend this system is manufactured by WarioWare, Inc. (the fictional company founded and managed by Wario). YEAR OF WARIO!
This idea falls into a lot of the obvious trappings that I'm seeing a lot of ideas on GAF falling into, and one in particular that Nintendo themselves has fallen into with the Wii U: Taking terrible ideas/hardware and thinking that just slapping on some Nintendo franchises will make it sell. Insular ideas that only appeal to Nintendo fans who would buy in anyway.
It's 2014 - who is going to purchase a cheaply-made secondary device to carry around that barely has enough power to push 2D graphics? Nobody. Not at any price.
We also need to accept that Nintendo's brand is quickly losing relevance to the very market you're saying this device would be targeted at. Slapping Nintendo's pantheon of stale mascots on this thing would only appeal to Nintendo's shrinking base. You're basically describing an even cheaper, less capable, less appealing DS.
Finally, nobody in the US cares about Wario. Especially not kids.