How Nintendo Got It Wrong

This may seem like a strange post given that Nintendo are currently riding high, winning both the console and handheld wars and reaching out to a new market. Indeed that Nintendo made it out of 3rd place at all in the home console “war” is remarkable. However, all is not well. Increasingly traditional gamers, that’s consumers who have been purchasing games consoles since long before the Wii, have been feeling that the company is no longer making games for them. Indeed it would be easy to quote Shigeru Miyamoto himself to back up such a claim; I don’t have the exact quote to hand, but he said something like “I’m no longer making games I consider to be fun, but making games I think my wife would like.” This is exemplified by his recent output, made up largely of games like Nintendogs and Wii Fit.

It is this sort of game that is Nintendo’s problem. While the Wii is selling well, it is well known that the system has a relatively poor attach rate (number of games sold per console sold), largely because a lot of these games are little more than the latest fad. Wii Fit in particular is an offender here, I wonder how many non-gamers have bought a Wii for Wii Fit, only for the Wii to now sit unused after the initial novelty wore off.

While this is happening, traditional gamers are starting to feel left out. Beyond Super Smash Bros. Brawl there has been no Nintendo game which has elicited that old feeling of joy from me. Even the much vaunted Super Mario Galaxy left me cold. While I may be in the minority on the latter, few can disagree when it is noted that Nintendo have been lax with their output recently. Twilight Princess was okay, but it was a Gamebcube game, not a Wii game. Mario Kart Wii felt dumbed down and can be played almost on auto-pilot. Metroid Prime 3 (not strictly a Nintendo game, but overseen by them) had too many people in it at the start and felt generally diluted. Metroid Prime was noted for its feeling of isolation, among other things, introducing too many non-player characters was just a flat out bad idea.

What of the horizon? What is to come? Well, unless E3 has some serious surprises; Nintendo has nothing of interest to show to the traditional gamer. The big rumour I’ve heard is Kid Icarus, an update of a NES game nobody really cares about. Nothing new has been brought to the table by Nintendo in terms of genuinely interesting IP of late. As a more traditional gamer you can’t help but wonder how Nintendo got it so wrong. When did their consoles become host to little more than dressed up gimmicks and experiences that are game like, but not games.

In reaching out for a new audience, Nintendo have seemingly abandoned the old audience they once catered for. They have done this with no evidence that their new audience will show a sustained interest. It is a brave, if perhaps foolhardy move. It does however recall their original move into computer games, after having originally set up as a company that made playing cards. I don’t get the feeling this move will continue to be as successful though.

But is it really that they got it all right? (Stay tuned for the next post in this series; Where Nintendo Got It Right).