Nintendo backs off pursuit of casual players
Shigeru Miyamoto says a passive attitude on players' part is "kind of a pathetic thing"
Nintendo dominated sales for several years in the last generation by bringing in new audiences of casual gamers with products like Wii Sports and Wii Fit. However, in a new interview with Edge Magazine (portions of which were published by sister-site CVG), designer Shigeru Miyamoto suggested he has lost his desire to cater to that crowd.
"[These are] the sort of people who, for example, might want to watch a movie. They might want to go to Disneyland," Miyamoto said. "Their attitude is, 'Okay, I am the customer. You are supposed to entertain me.' It's kind of a passive attitude they're taking, and to me it's kind of a pathetic thing. They do not know how interesting it is if you move one step further and try to challenge yourself [with more advanced games]."
Miyamoto also acknowledged that in the previous generation, those audiences were an explicit target of Nintendo's efforts.
"In the days of DS and Wii, Nintendo tried its best to expand the gaming population," he said. "Fortunately, because of the spread of smart devices, people take games for granted now. It's a good thing for us, because we do not have to worry about making games something that are relevant to general people's daily lives."
Nothing would make me happier than to see Nintendo become a major player in the fight for the hardcore crowd, but I just don't see it right now. Maybe not this generation at all. If they had developed a more traditional console that might have been a different story, but I still know people who are confused that the Wii U isn't a controller peripheral for the Wii...
It was a gimmick that played well on TV
And like all fads, it burned out. These people used it as a bowling machine, they bought very few games.
These people now buy iPads , and continue to use iPads because they have utility beyond playing candy crush. They list the casuals because they were never customers, they were transitory
There were quite a few of us journalist in the industry before the Wii U released that were vocal to this being a real issue for Nintendo going forward, but very few even seemed to care. Nintendo makes fantastic games and it's a staple part of our industry, but had Nintendo not confused the market identity of the Wii U prior to and immediately post release - this includes games and online infrastructure - I think it would doing much better on the market than it is today.
Nintendo makes incredible games that feature a quality that's unrivalled in the industry. It's games are so great, in fact, that gamers (and parents) are willing to purchase a console just to play its games. Nintendo needs to keep doing what it does best, and ensure that its hardware finds a better balance between tech and cost to the consumer.
Most of us sounding the alarm bells were shrugged off by the "never count Nintendo out" crowd.
The problem at Nintendo goes far deeper. Yes, they do see themselves as a toy company, but they are also having issues with the fact that Japan is diverging heavily from the rest of the world. In how their electronic media market is shaped. Streaming services are essentially non-factors theree, and due to the number dome people riding the trains ebook so and music are still popular, but when it comes to movie ps and games, it's physical only. He'll the local Blockbuster equivalent has never been bigger.
Nintendo, and they are hardly alone in this, takes the strategy that worked in 1986. What works in Japan will work elsewhere. Japanese companies typically see the internet as a giant mall, and the old men at the top do not understand how the rest of the world is changing. Nintendo thinks they're Disney, and that their pixie dust will never fail. They didn't behave their engineers, likely hired from corporate talent pools and not entertainment based ones use XBL or PSN before designing their services. They don't ship outdated technology because they want to, they do it because they HAVE TO. their internal teams are very behind on technology, and since they train from within, they're shipping last gen consoles because they have to.
Nintendo has a lot of great IP, but they're cranking out barely updated clines of the same games they were making on N64. The six year olds of today hVe no nostalgia for Nintendo, and 40 billion is a lot of cash in the bank, but it just means they're going to take longer to bleed out. They need to merge with someone who can help them, Apple or Disney are the only western companies they could get away with. Sony is too unstable right now to do anything other than suck up their nest egg into the mothership. Like it or not, when Miyamoto gives, without a new Wunderkind, they're simply that's, because Nintendo is more a religion than it is a company when it comes to their primary customer base, and when the Prophets dies, wither go the faithful
What where these casuals thinking?
Even if Nintendo breaks the bank and actually start making enough games for it, it won't be enough.