Nintendo is a company once famed for bringing the games to market that the Hardcore Gamers wanted to play. Despite arguments of childish aesthetics and perpetual delays, the Nintendo64 and early years of the GameCube demonstrated that for every incentive there may have been to pick-up a PlayStation or a Saturn, Nintendo could produce a game to satisfy the cravings of the long-time gamers.
The debate still rages as to whether it was Nintendo who abandoned the Hardcore, or the Hardcore that abandoned Nintendo, but one thing is certain – Nintendo are selling more games and hardware than ever before. With this in mind, who could blame the company for aspiring to - and achieving - such lofty goals? The aforementioned videogame hobbyists, of course.
However, in a recent interview with CasualGaming.biz, it appears that Nintendo feel that little has changed. When questioned whether the company’s success within the Causal Gamer market has come at a cost to the Hardcore, Rob Lowe, Nintendo UK’s Wii Product Manager, stated that “there is always room for both”, and continued to comment that, “for every Wii Fit, Brain Training and Nintendogs title we release we also release a Super Mario Galaxy, Professor Layton, Smash Bros, Metroid and so on.”
Further pursuing this chain of thought, Lowe was later questioned on the importance of each the Causal and Hardcore demographics, to which he stated that there’s significance in both: “For every Carnival Games there is a BioShock and for every Wii Fit there is a Resident Evil 5. What's certain is that many casual games are now becoming 'ever-green' selling consistently over weeks and months, where many hardcore titles may still achieve similar sales levels but over a much shorter time scale. It's really just different product cycles.”
While many may argue that Professor Layton and the Curious Village is, in fact, also a casual game, and further to this, the layman’s action in Resident Evil 5 may have actually removed it from the strictly Hardcore spectrum also (though, both these titles have been rewarded at retail for doing so), few could deny that the Hardcore Gamer is well catered for on the PLAYSTATION 3 and Xbox 360. With Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s own godfather of gaming, having himself recently stated that his obsession with 3D worlds led to difficult times within the company around the turn of the century, the attention now paid to smaller, less costly games has not only benefited Nintendo financially, but structurally also, it seems.
Whether or not Nintendo will deliver on the regularly promised Wii games developed with the videogaming hobbyist in mind remains to be seen, and previously fans have been told to keep a close eye on this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), which takes place next week in Los Angeles. Electronic Theatre will of course bring you all the latest direct from the show floor.
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Comments
It's ok them saying that "for every Wii Fit there is a Resident Evil 5", but Resident Evil 5 isn't made by Nintendo, and the fact that the guy couldn't come-up with an equivilant Nintendo game proves THEY DON'T make hardcore games any more.
Without realising it I had become completely unsatisfied with the Nintendo Wii, and found that no games really dragged me in anymore. The Wii was used when friends came round, to socialise, but that was about it. Only when I had strayed away from the Wii I realised this, and then remembered the feeling of being utterly hooked by a game. For some reason the Wii does not have the capability to do this, and it is complete lie that the Wii caters for actual "gamers"
The Wii is for people that never used to own a games console, and I think Nintendo are happy at having gained this extra market, meaning that they don't have to fight the competition for market share, but have their own niche market, where there is little or no competiton to try and steal their customers. Lets face it, as a business, how many other companies would like to be in the same situation as Nintendo?
However if Nintendo are finding a market from these people then good on them just don't try and tell us that your catering for hardcore gamers. We all know the truth, so why don't they own up, and stand proud of what they've accomplished. If they were honest about it people would probably respect them more.