Nintendo's New Brand Game (Touch Generation)

[Heretic Machine]

From Business Week (http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jun2006/id20060622_124931.htm?chan=innovation_innovation++ +design_innovation+and+design+lead):

The Web site for Nintendo's subbrand, Touch Generations, which launched this month, is filled with photos of consumers in the target demographic. In one shot, two gray-haired men in blazers peer curiously over the shoulders of a neatly dressed woman playing a game on a Nintendo DS Lite, the company's sleek new portable player. In another image, a well-coiffed, 60-ish lady holds the DS Lite sideways, like an open book, smiling contentedly at the camera.

"The industry is really healthy, really big. But it's also very clubby," Nintendo's Kaplan says. "One of our goals was to target people entering the game world for the first time. It's absolutely about tapping into emerging markets." Kaplan adds that one emerging market Nintendo seeks to court is that of aging former gamers weaned on Pac Man and Pong reentering the gaming world.
I just don't know how successful this plan will be. Creating a new sub-brand that is hardly identifiable as a seperate entity is probably not going to get my grandpa to buy games.

[Blade]

If your Grandpa likes Sudoku and is willing to spend $150... Brain Age will keep him busy for a long time. :)

Nintendo is doing the right thing. Here's hoping that they can maintain the quality when aiming at hardcore gamers.

[digitalErich]

I would have agreed with the comments a few months ago, but my parents visited last week and my mom, who knows nothing about videogamtes _at_all_ mentioned she wanted to get a Nintendo DS so she could play "that brain game." Nintendo has been running advertisements in a lot of non-gaming mags lately (Time for example) and I've expereinced first hand that at least some of it is working.

[DesignerKid]

First of all, EA has several brands... EA Games, EA Sports, EA Sports BIG so sub-brands can and do occasionally work. And as someone else has pointed out, I've seen it working in action.

Just the other day I was walking towards my local Gamestop and noticed a couple of older women, just ahead of me, walking in to Gamestop. At first I thought, mothers buying their kids gifts. Instead what I saw when I got in there were two older women (mid-to-late 40's) looking for Brain Age and 'any other Super Mario game' that might be out. She had already purchased New Super Mario Bros. and a few other games; her friend who was quite attractive was actually looking for something that both of them could play together. In my 20+ years of gaming, I've never seen anything like it.

And that certainly isn't the only instance either... My girlfriends boss who doesn't play games saw a kid at his photography studio playing the game and ran out that day and bought one himself. He absolutely loves it.

[Harlan Hoyt]

As someone who is hardly in the Touch Generations demographic and already owns a DS, I have to say that Brain Age has ruined me for playing Sudoku on paper. Being able to draw the small numbers in the corners of the square is amazingly useful. Don't have to worry about erasing them.

I have no idea how well Nintendo is going to do with this. At least they're giving it a real try, I guess. They don't seem to be simply paying this idea lip service -- they're putting some money and ad revenue into it. I just have a feeling that "hardcore" gaming and gamers -- the stereotype of arrested development man children, stuck in a twilight world of ultraviolent games -- may be too well ingrained in the American psyche for this.

And, to be frank, much like the image of comic books and comic book buyers, there's some truth to the stereotype. Can you imagine you grandma going into EB (Gamestop now, I guess) and buying the new Sudoku game? Comic shops and videogame stores in my experience are full of extremely stand-offish, arrogant people. THAT'S the culture that needs to change before videogames (and comic books) can become a more mainstream media.

[Phhhh]

This was announced Pre-E3 FYI. They had a bunch of Tough Generations games such as Big Brain Academy and a new version of Tetris DS etc.

[Savok]

My mother loved the Brain Age demo that came with my DS Lite, first thing I could actually get her to spend more then a minute on.

I think that, as gamers, we simply can not understand how much these games bridge the gap.

[Siraris]

My mother plays brain age quite often, but she would never touch another game out there. She only does brain age because it's not a game, and she thinks that it will keep her sharp. Whether it does or not is not the issue, she would never play Mario or Zelda or Metroid, not if you paid her to. She used to play Intellevision when I was really young, but she gave that up pretty quickly.

There really is a stigma with games of them not only being difficult, but also a waste of time. The thing I heard all my life when I lived with my parents is "I don't understand what these games are, this makes no sense, it looks like you're just pushing buttons" to "You're wasting your time playing these games".

I think that Nintendo jumped the gun by a few years, unless they are in this for the long haul. I know I will be playing games for the rest of my life, even when I'm 80. I think that if this Touch Generation stuff was done in another 10 or 20 years when people who were into games and comfortable with them are getting older, it would be HUGE. They are trying to appeal to a generation of people who can barely operate their DVD player, and don't really care to learn how.

[Savok]

It is a waste of time, but so's every other form of entertainment.

[JazGalaxy]

It makes perfect sense to attack a new market with a new brand. Why try to convert people to an existing way of thinking when you're trying to create a way of thinking that is just for them?

[RMan]

It’s still a bit funny that ‘gamers’ often feel that people not playing games are somehow incompatible with interactive entertainment. Many non-gamers may like playing sports, board games, card games, all kinds of stuff that’s not TV or movies, so why do so many of them not play video games? Well, frankly, I’m really not sure how many times people have tried even the least to make games for them. Seriously, before Nintendo, at the most developers made slightly different games but nothing real out of the ordinary (even the really unique stuff seemed still targeted at the core gamers). I think developers have just been too busy making the next best extension of the current things that they didn’t really try to get back to the roots of gaming and figure out what pathways have not been traveled.

I think the new brand is good, I mean, even if they make cool new games that would appeal to a broader audience, they can’t just tell that audience that their games are made for them, because even on the Wii or DS the majority of games will be core market driven and they need to be led to the titles they’ll more likely have fun with. They seem to be doing a good job making games for traditional non-gamers, but they still need to lead these gamers to the proper games, I think the brand can serve that purpose well.

[baz]

When I worked in Tokyo, my mum came through on a business trip. I lent her my DS with Zoo Keeper for the journey and she absolutely loved it. My boss at work is getting a DS Lite and giving his mum his old DS for her bday.

I think Big N are really onto something. I'm definately thinking of the get a DS Lite and giving my DS to my mum plan as well. Tetris, Zoo Keeper and Brain Training and I'm sure she even needs anything else. My mum has spent about 100 hours playing Zuma over the last year, so I'm guessing a DS would be perfect.

[Rirath]

It’s still a bit funny that ‘gamers’ often feel that people not playing games are somehow incompatible with interactive entertainment.

Nah, it's the non-gamers who'll say they KNOW they're not compatible.

But hey, keep shelling out cash to get that other xx% of people on the planet to play games. Because, ya know, EVERYONE wants to... they just don't know it yet.

[net7runner]

Gawd, I love the Japanese version of the site:

How to Chat! DS
Chat! Chat! Chat!
My First Touch!

Just...can't stop thinking about it... (http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=116)

WHY ARE YOU BRINGING BACK THE HIGH SCHOOL MEMORIES?!??! ! WHY?!