Nintendo Feels Competitors Lack the "DNA" to Court Expanded Audience

George Harrisson says MS and Sony stuck in a "Hollywood" mentality!

29 May 2007

Nintendo's not usually one for the smack talk or chest thumping, but lately the (usually) polite company has been engaging in just the teensiest bit of braggadocio.

Today's exhibition comes to you by way of a Wired interview, recently conducted with George Harrisson (Nintendo of America's number two man). On the discussion table: Nintendo's proven (and staggering) success in courting so-called 'expanded audience' gamers, and why feuding cousins Microsoft and Sony seem continually unable to match Nintendo's winning formula for wooing over a non-hardcore audience.

"So far they [Microsoft and Sony] haven't spent a lot of time focused on us." Says Harrison. "Now that we're having some success, they probably will. We can already see some of the things that they've tried. For last year's E3, at the last minute, Sony rushed out their Sixaxis controller as an effort to respond to the Wii remote. We saw Microsoft roll out Viva Pinata as their killer app for the Pokemon set, and neither of those worked really well. Part of it is, I think it's not in their DNA. They're really good at reaching a certain customer, and have a real difficulty understanding how we succeed with the customers that we have."

The winning formula, he argues, is basic: Produce broadly appealing games with 'legs' long enough to maintain sustained demand month after month (as opposed to the "Hollywood" model of initial release, big profits, and diminishing interest). In this respect his sentiments echo recent comments made by NOA President Reggie Fils-Aime. Says Harrisson, "[Games like Nintendogs or Brain Age] do not have the typical lifecycle of a video game product where in twelve, sixteen weeks you've pretty much got all the business you're going to have and then you're done...These things have a long, long life to them."

"[I think] that as we get through this entire lifecycle already people are starting to guess 'who's going to win [the console war]'. [I'm not sure] it's going to be a typical lifecycle. In the past, we've always had five to six-year lifecycles which were sort of forced by someone jumping ahead and using a new piece of technology. And we're finding out now that the appeal of faster processors and better graphics is really sort of reaching a diminishing point. There's a price point and there's the quality that's holding the PlayStation 3 back. They're selling so many PlayStation 2s because people are saying, 'You know what? The graphics are pretty good, the price is good, and the library is good.'"

And as for how much of the total gaming pie Nintendo feels they can snag through this 'non-Hollywood' strategy?

"[We have] a belief that we can be, of this lifecycle, 40-45% of the hardware that's being sold. And that would be a phenomenal increase for us over the GameCube era. But on the other hand, we could get over 50%. And a lot of that depends on what our competitors do. If they only focus on the Grand Theft Autos and the Halos and things of that nature, they're focusing on a very tiny part of the market. The overall market is growing so dramatically that they're going to miss out on the opportunities that we're seeing in the expanded audience."

Harrison went on to detail some of the tactics Nintendo plans to employ over the coming year to court this 'expanded audience'. Part of these include a general shift away from marketing to the company's traditional age bracket of 9-12 and focusing more on 29-45 year olds. (Did you know that Dancing with the Stars was a great Wii advertising showcase for Nintendo during '06?)

"One thing you have to remember about the expanded audience" continues Harrison "is that they are not so focused on a category that something is launched, known by everyone, and done with...[A]wareness of Wii is still at about 60% among people over 25. That means that 40% of the population has still never heard of Wii. It's hard to imagine, but it's true. And as a result, to them, Wii Sports and other things are still brand new. So don't be surprised if you continue to see us send out some messages in the fall."

 

-Mark Whiting, 1up.com

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