Sega: 3DS can attract mature audience to handheld gaming
President Mike Hayes praises Nintendo's "brilliance" in creating unique console for 3D gaming
Nintendo's 3DS handheld has the potential to attract an older, broader audience to handheld gaming, according to Sega West's president Mike Hayes.
Speaking in an interview published today on GamesIndustry.biz, the publisher boss suggested a number of mature Sega franchises could work on the 3DS, if the handheld appeals to a wider demographic than previous Nintendo consoles.
"With the quality of the device they've got it's possible they can expand their audience into an older, broader audience," he said.
"It was interesting to see games like Saint's Row on the device. If we could bring, let's say, a House of the Dead or an Aliens title, if the audience for 3DS is much broader it could give us much more scope in that market, and that's as exciting as well as Mario & Sonic and Monkey Ball games."
Publishers are already committing triple-A franchises to the 3D console, with Capcom's Resident Evil, Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed and Konami's Metal Gear Solid projects already in development.
A number of publishers, most significantly Sega, Capcom and Electronic Arts, tried to reach a mature audience on the Nintendo Wii with mixed results, eventually abandoning efforts to reach hardcore game consumers on the home console.
But Hayes sees new potential, and praised Nintendo for its vision of 3DS, highlighting the fact that while many manufacturers can jump on the home 3D bandwagon, Nintendo has created its own unique, self-contained technology.
"The 3DS is Nintendo through and through, this is Nintendo's brilliance," he offered. "They're almost in their own technological world, doing their own thing.
"Whilst 3D TV is quite an amazing technology advancement, and many companies will get into that, Nintendo will now create this huge business with their own unique piece of technology that very few if any, will be able to copy. That's Nintendo over and over again, it's fantastic. For us as a third-party it's a great leg up in terms of the portable business."
The full interview with Mike Hayes, where he also discusses the potential for Sony Move and Microsoft Kinect, can be read here.
1. Timing. 3Ds is getting the mature products from day 1. That sets a tone for the whole generation. With Wii they didn't give mature products a try until after the tone of the console was well established.
2. Piss poor attempts. A grand majority of the mature product attempts on Wii were failures as projects before they were failures on the shelf. Putting Dead Space on rails? A black and white brawler? The first House of the Dead and RE: Umbrella Chronicles sold well over a million each. Their sequels launched in the midst of a huge influx of on rails shooters. Clogged the market that people were already sick of. Pardon my aggression 3rd party devs and publishers but whomever made those decisions warrants all the finger pointing.
So provided that their attempts on 3DS do not come with asinine decisions regarding them, they'll do fine.
This shows that if there is a good game, "hardcore" gamers looking for mature games will go for them.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Haven Tso on 23rd June 2010 11:01pm
[link url=http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2010/06/24/dead_or_alive_3d_shake/
]http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2010/06...[/link]
Well, that answers that regarding "mature" themes titles on 3DS.
They shake their jigglies....I want to shake my head.
I dont see why the 3DS would be an exception and start to cater mostly to the casual audience. It would be unprecedented.
Level 1= Web games
Level 2= games for DS and iphone
Level 3 (The awkward one)= games for PSP, Wii, iPad and now 3DS
Level 4= PS3, PC and 360 (PSP2 possibly).
(& stylized games can do well on a wide array of platforms without too much work on the developers part)
Amirite?
P.S. of course each platform has exclusive features to worry about like 3D and control schemes. But unless you want to make the best possible use of this stuff, ports can be pumped out easily to other platforms on the same level.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Bonobo Mankini on 25th June 2010 1:05pm