RubberJohnny
Banned
A certain point of contention, Nintendo recently held a 'Mind, Body and Console' conference in London, which was covered by Edge. The full article is interesting and worth a read, but this small extract in particular is worthy of note.
One slide of Dawn Paine's [UK Head of Marketing] presentation outlined the ways in which gaming has traditionally been perceivedas 'an addiction that removes the player from reality'. A picture of a long haired nerd, screaming as he gripped a control pad, appeared on the projection screen, the surrounding space soon ppulated by the phrases 'glazed over', 'isolated' and other negative terminology.
Rather than debunk such perceptions, Nintendo simply suggested it was courting a different audience, and the company would soon come to stand for 'self development, health, beauty and fitness'.
This paradigm shift, to use Paine's terms, would come as the result of Nintendo's Touch! Generation software, which unlike traditional gamng, doesn't "replace your life - it connects with it". Paine's assertion that Nintendo wasn't abandoning the traditional gamer was supported by jus three examples: Metroid Prime 3, Phantom Hourglass and Mario Galaxy.
Clearly there's nothing wrong with engaging a new audience - indeed, it's massively profitable - but at the same time such efforts seem to dismiss the worth of the medium prior to this influx of accessible, functional but artistically shallow titles.