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IndustryGamers - Your Games Are Our Business
James Brightman, Editor-in-Chief & Co-Founder
David Radd, Senior Editor
Have news tips, comments or questions? E-mail us.
IndustryGamers - Your Games Are Our Business
James Brightman, Editor-in-Chief & Co-Founder
David Radd, Senior Editor
Have news tips, comments or questions? E-mail us.
Nintendo has sold over 56 million Wii consoles since the system launched three years ago. While it's hard to clearly define “casual” versus “hardcore,” it's become quite clear from consumers purchasing habits on the Wii that a good majority of that platform's audience is indeed casual. Nintendo's focus this generation has been all about simple, casual and social rather than high-tech and complex. The Wii is a very social platform, but Nintendo could do a lot better by encouraging its audience to be social online. Social networks are hugely popular in this Internet age, and it's highly likely that most of the Nintendo audience also frequently uses Facebook or MySpace.
Gaming is also now the most popular application category on Facebook and MySpace. Why not align one of the most well-known and trusted gaming brands in the world – Nintendo – with these social networks? Yes, Nintendo already allows DSi users to connect to Facebook to upload photos, but that is just a small step. Nintendo needs to start pumping out games for Facebook and MySpace, just like Playfish, Zynga and Playdom.
The audience is there, and because of the viral nature of social networking, Nintendo's games would very quickly be adopted as word of mouth and recommendations get thrown around. FarmVille has somewhere around 60 million monthly players, and it's easy to envision a large portion of those players, for example, trying out a Nintendo social game and inviting their friends to play too.
3 Comments
4 months ago
This is an excellent article which presents a logical expansion plan for Nintendo. Unfortunately, I think the odds are low that Nintendo will actually implement something like this. While Nintendo has not been afraid to innovate in hardware or game design, traditionally they have avoided business model innovation like the plague. Given their druthers I think they'd still be making cartridges. They have a deep aversion to piracy and any technology they feel isn't sufficently locked down. Moving in the directions suggested in the article would require a wrenching revision of how they develop, market, and profit from games, and I don't see Nintendo embarking on such a course unless they were desperate to save their business. Which is not at all where they're at right now.
Perhaps someone could persuade them to create a whole new division to exploit their IP in the ways suggested, but this would inevitably bump into the existing company's operations, and the result would be a mess.
Sony, on the other hand, seems to be more aware of the possibilities in social gaming, as does Microsoft. The next year promises to be interesting to see how market share changes amongst the three of them...
4 months ago
Thanks Steve. I agree; although I'd love to see Nintendo pursue the social stuff, MS or Sony are much more likely to do so first.
4 months ago
Friend codes does not equal social. Also, lol@that "it prints money" picture.
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