Tellaerin said:
Games for casual/non-gamers != 'traditional' games.
Different audiences, limited overlap.
Casual games are selling to this casual market, but that doesn't account for the sales of traditional games on the platform. If the audience Nintendo was supposedly reaching out to had been interested in those titles in the first place, then there would have been no reason to make a special effort to reach out to them in the first place. (Which underscores my contention that overlap is limited.) And that makes me feel disinclined to believe that most of them would suddenly develop an interest in other types of games based on Brain Training or Nintendogs. Write it off as circular reasoning if you like - I'm just telling you what I think.
And you can't keep insisting that it's all driven by the same salarymen, OL's, and elderly folks who supposedly drove DS hardware numbers into the stratosphere by picking up the system for Brain Training, Nintendogs, etc., either. Or do traditional games just magically become less scary/intimidating/overcomplicated/boring for nongamers when they're on the DS? Maybe you could make an argument for that in the case of purely stylus-based games designed for casual play, but those aren't the titles I'm talking about here.
I don't expect you to agree with me, but I know you're not stupid - please do us both a favor and stop pretending that you don't see what I'm saying here.
Actually, that's a rather simple one to explain. I can even use personal experience to try to help you understand, it all has to do with
'Barrier to Entry'.
First, think about the first video game you ever played.
I will be using the DS for this demonstration since it has proved it's ability, and the Wii has yet to do so.
Now, let's take a good hardcore game, something like God of War. I remember looking at the God of War instruction manual, to see the controls, and not quite comprehending how everything worked. So I just memorized the most basic controls (attack & jump), started up the game, and figured the rest out from there.
See, I can do that, cause I've been playing video games since the early 80's. I know the PS2 controller standard pretty well, and I know in general how that style of game works. But think about this, if an experienced gamer like myself can't figure out how to play a game from reading the manual, what kind of barrier to entry must that be for a complete novice? That is monumental. A person who might otherwise like a game simply won't ever play it because, at first glance, it seems beyond them.
But that's not the only barrier to entry. How many girls do you know who enjoy watching their boyfriends, or just male friends, play Final Fantasy games, but won't touch the controller themselves. They can follow the story, enjoy the cutscenes, but when it gets to a battle, or customizing their character and managing levels, they're totally lost, because it's not something they have the training to understand.
Then there's the third, and even larger barrier. The stigma associated with being a gamer. Gamers are geeks. Gamers are violent. Gamers are losers. A person who might otherwise enjoy playing video games might have valid social reason to avoid them.
The DS has very neatly sidestepped
ALL of these barriers. And it was able to do it with one game, Nintendogs.
First, sidestepping the social barrier, by making it a game that is socially acceptable to play. Non-violent, appeals to both adults and children, males and females. When you see people in your church, people you like and respect playing video games, you will obviously reconsider your position no them as worthless or for violent, geeky losers.
Second, the controls for Nintendogs are ridiculously simple from the beginning. They are so easy to learn, and introduce you to uses for the touch screen, and even, to a limited extent, for the buttons. So now you go from not knowing how to control video games, to have a decent understanding of where everything is located, and how they respond. The software basically teaches you how to use the hardware, so now more complex games, while they still require learning new techniques, are really just an extension of existing knowledge, not something completely new and foreign.
Finally, while Nintendogs starts out as a very easy game, it has a lot of advanced stuff the more you get into it. Mini-games, stat managing, budget balancing and the like. These are the same techniques that are used to great affect in games with much deeper gameplay. This doesn't mean that you can go straight from Nintendogs and automatically know exactly how to play a Final Fantasy game, but it does mean that you have a place to begin, and don't have to start completely lost in the dark.
The DS, and the games aimed at casual/non-gamers, neatly remove the primary barriers that prevent people from becoming gamers.
The software teaches you to use the hardware. The software teaches you the conventions of gaming. Now you have a frame of reference with which to broaden your understanding. You can move on from that to more hardcore games, if they meet your interests, without finding yourself dropped in a bottomless mire with no idea of what goes where, or even why it goes there.
Now, this does not mean that the people who started with casual games are all buying hardcore games, in fact it's reasonable to assume that less than half of them are, but it's unreasonable to assume that none of them are. When the sales numbers are showing games selling higher than
all of their predecessors, you can't just attribute it to lapsed gamers, because you're selling more units than there ever were lapsed gamers.
Tellaerin said:
From the beginning, Nintendo's been touting the Wii as this system for the casuals and nongamers. It's designed to appeal to a segment of the market that finds conventional controls too complex, conventional games daunting, yadda yadda yadda. Its big draw is its motion-sensing controller, and the way it allows players to perform actions in the game by miming them. That's garnered quite a bit of attention from the media because it's novel - it's something different, and there's a 'gee whiz' aspect to it. People try it and go, 'oh, neat!' I think it would be safe to say that's been a major contributing factor in sales, wouldn't you?
Ummmm...no they haven't. That shows that you haven't been paying attention to Nintendo's marketing moves at all.
Why did Nintendo include Wii Sports in the base package in NA & EU? Think about it, really think about it. Did they do this for casual gamers? I mean, casual gamers who would reasonably buy the console and the game anyway if that was the only game they wanted?
No, the reason for Wii Sports as a pack-in is bloody obvious in hindsight. NA, especially, is a much more hardcore market than Japan. Nintendo can get away with Wii Sports sold separately in Japan, because it's something the Japanese people are likely to buy into.
In NA, Wii Sports would have died sold separately, because the hardcore gamers would never have bought it. If the hardcore gamers didn't buy it, and show their casual/non-gamer friends, these non-gamers would not no it existed. They would then proceed to NOT buy the console.
I guarantee you, were you to have the chance to ask anyone at Nintendo, they would tell you that Wii Sports is targeted equally at hardcore gamers as it is at non-gamers. Wii Sports is fun, even for hardcore gamers. It's no Resistance:FoM, but it's a game that hardcore gamers can enjoy just as much as non-gamers, even more with all the unlockables and secrets it has, something that you average non-gamer isn't going to give two shits about.
The goal of the Wii is software that appeals to both casual gamers and hardcore gamers, and that brings non-gamers into the fold, who will hopefully then become hardcore gamers, or at least casual gamers. The ultimate goal is for every single game to appeal to both types of gamers, but that's hard, verging on impossible. So Nintendo does the next best thing, 2 games for casuals or every 1 game for hardcore. This is perfectly logical, because a hardcore gamer will take a chance on a casual game, whereas a casual gamer is less likely to take a chance on a hardcore game. It is also logical because hardcore games usually take longer to develop and cost more money than casual games. Spread like that, you have Nintendo making just as many hardcore games for the Wii as they made for the GC, plus another 2x as many games aimed at the casual market, meaning Nintendo alone is making 3x as many games for the Wii as they made for the GC.
The fact that people perceive the Wii as being primarily mini-game/casual gamer focused, may hurt the Wii's chances of accomplishing this, but I guarantee you, if publishers see their hardcore games selling as much or more copies on the Wii as they are on other consoles, they'll put those games on the Wii, and won't be the least bit upset that casual mini-game fests are outselling them, because they STILL selling more than they possibly could on opposing hardware.
Tellaerin said:
The bottom line is that the novelty of waving around the controller to make things happen is going to wear off, and casual/non-gamer types are only going to buy so many gesture-based party games to play with their friends. And yet Nintendo seems fixated on that audience right now, and don't seem to show any signs of shifting focus. The core gamer audience - the one that's traditionally driven sales of console hardware and software - seems almost like an afterthought. You're assuming that this new market segment is going to behave the exact same way the core gamers have, and sustain hardware and software sales in the long term the same way core gamers do. That's unproven, and I think it's doubtful.
Again, the Wiimote isn't about novelty. It doesn't matter to Nintendo if the novelty wears off. The Wiimote, the entire philosophy behind the Wii, is lowering barrier to entry. Getting people to own the system in the first place. Hence the picture channel, news channel and weather channel.
Nintendo doesn't care if the Wiimote is a better controller. All they care about is that it is an easier controller to learn. Getting people to learn to use the controller is just a first step. Once they are willing to use it, your ability to sell them a game, any game, increases by a factor of 6 (that's based on statistics from the cable business, not the video game business, but I think it probably applies).
The fact that it's a better controller, a more innovative controller, allows them to differentiate themselves from the competition. So, yeah, that previous statement was hyperbolic, Nintendo does care. But they're 100% more concerned that the controller is easier to learn, that it crushes the barrier to entry, and makes it easier to bring in people who otherwise wouldn't play games. Once you have those people playing your games, the controller no longer matters, now you have to introduce software that will slowly bring them from just playing casually, to making gaming a central and important hobby for them.
