NTDOY/Iwata:"We are not aiming at children enough"(lolwut?)

Nintendo fans on IGN are like 'he took a pay cut, he's so humble, he is awesome'... He's an idiot.

What's next then, how could they target kids anymore, grooming? Are they going to start competing with Vtech learning tablets?

Instead of fixing the problems Nintendo just keep digging the other way.

But that's the thing, if you push too much that way it's just patronising the kids and pushing away the older gamers. Kids don't need baby consoles. Think back to when you were a kid and I was kid, I was playing anything.

And if the older gamer is already judging Nintendo these days as kiddy and the truth is they do, the last thing Nintendo need to do is push even further in that direction. I think they need to start giving the older Nintendo gaming fans what they want in terms of games, features and services.

Now finally its official and sheeps can shut it ...

He is correct. Kids want to play mainstream games like gears or killzone. They aren't smart enough to know that a game doesn't have to have swear words and guns to be good.

Lol this is exactly what I have been saying!!! It was a misstake to pretend that Wii-U was gonna bring back the core gamers. One of Nintendo's strength is that it offers a safe haven (or so the public thinks) from violence/sexual content and thus parents can feel safe giving it to their kids. The Wii also had that health image which further strenghtened the kid-friendly message. Nintendo should go all in on local multiplayer games (new Mario is perfect) that families can play together. That's a very important niche that no other company can compete with them in. Motion gaming is also important (but not necessarily for their core franchises).

Actually, Nintendo are bigger than Sony, in terms of market capitalization.

Yeah cause children have a lot of disposable income. No wonder Nintendo is in the situation they are in.

Nintendo really has done an awful job of selling the Wii U to kids, as evidenced by the poor COD sales. All of their advertisements are geared towards kids, though, so I'm not really sure how much else they can do. They should probably start advertising the system to parents, too.

Kids obviously demand it from the parents. They have always aimed for the kiddy market, its easy money.
3DS is doing it but not the Wii U this time.
Well at least they've made it official, they only care about the kids. 'Manboys' would disagree.

Kids are more into tablets, smartphones, iOS and Android products... But not Nintendo's tablet and Wii U.

I don't really think kids are more into phones and tablets than Nintendo games. I just think that kids like to use what their parents use to feel more grown up and that parents will gladly buy them those devices because the games on them are only like $1 and they are capable of keeping kids occupied. I preferred good games when I was a kid, though, and I kind of doubt that has changed.

I lol'd

on topic, is sure seems their Christmas add campaign was aimed at children and only children.

@Heil68: As were all the ads they've come up with so far. Remember the adverts designed at children coaxing their parents?

Are they trying to go third party?

Kid-friendly titles should be made for both younger and older age groups, rather than just kids. :x

he is still getting paid to say stupid crap like this.

doesnt he know a lot of gamers want ninty to be like the snes again? i want something more than they were offering. the last time i was ever interested in ninty was the gc for games like re0 and re4, eternal darkness, killer 7 (ps2 version was already announced) where are those type of games? bayonetta and x aren't enough

yet he wants to really abandon us for kiddie games. i say it again, that paycut isnt a punishment for his stupidity, he should be fired

leapfrog better be worried LOLOL

Which translation is correct?

My 3 Nephews 3 games which they are currently playkng are GTA5, CoDBO2 and Vanquish. Theyre aged between 8 and 13, they no longer like Mario no longer since Mario Bros on the Wii as they was incapable of finishing it without my help.

Until Iwata makes some sort of clarification, I doubt we'll ever know.

Considering the average age of gamers nowdays is 35 yes they are quite delusional and seem lost

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-07/05/average-gamer

So yes if you were a big video game company who would you target? The 25-35 year old adult with a job and money to buy games or kids that rely on their parents to buy them games ? This isnt the 80's or early 90's where gaming still was considered a kid hobby

The SNES was completely geared towards kids, much moreso than the Wii and Wii U.

@PurpleMan5000: That is simply untrue. The SNES had a varied catalogue with both kiddy games and stuff like MK Final Fantasy and Contra,

Exactly. I love the SNES as much as the next guy (well, maybe not as much since it's not my most favorite Nintendo console of all time, but it still has a major place in my heart for being the first console I've ever owned), but jeez. That system wasn't seen as the "grown up" console back then. The Genesis/MegaDrive was. Why? Well, why don't we look at Nintendo's extreme ways of censorship of games like Mortal Kombat I (II and both versions of III were uncensored, needless to say, they still didn't meet the sales of the other versions) and Wolfenstein 3D. To this day, that still scars them, even IF they've let loose on third party products (they will censor their own games though, see FE: Awakening and Metroid Prime 3).

@nintendoboy16: so in other words we wont ever know and will be interpreted in which ever sense or form the person's view is for or against nintendo. Kinda backwards really.

Even then, it was still seen as the kiddy system back in the 90's. *see my post above for reasons why*

It's confusing to be sure. Frankly, I responded to the "kid friendly" part (as that was the only statement I read here at the time), but even then, I don't know what Iwata actually said in regards to this.

You seem to have missed that whole thread of Nintendo dropping below Sony and namco.

@nintendoboy16: Well least it will make good reading when bored afterwards on people interpretjng in whatever fashion suites them.

Nintendo cant seem to do adult content in the sense of high selling franchises like Gears, Res or GTA as they dont seem to sell (see geist, ETERNAL DARKNESS) though they should keep trying with this demograph as sooner or later some of the sh#t which is thrown at us is gonna stick or maybe throw money at a developer like Ubisoft to create a TPS or a FPS like Redsteel 3 with Co Op, Multi player, different control schemes for different weapons.

The SNES was notorious for censoring blood out of games like Mortal Kombat, and the Wii U has or is getting games like COD, Assassin's Creed, Bayonetta 2, Fire Emblem x Shin Megami Tensei, etc.

There were far less adults playing console games during the days of the SNES. Almost every game on the platform was created with children in mind.

Okay Nintendo started giving me cancer...

Children want Cod and graphics, not quality games. Please understand.

That being said, Nintendo never change.

@nintendoboy16: I was there in the 16 bit era, knee deep. There wasn't a perception SNES was kiddy particularly. Games with blood weren't that common, and SNES held its own in terms of both sports, action and adventure games. Both consoles had their kiddy type games but a few censored games didn't really affect things too much. SNES had Doom.

How old were you during this era?

@PurpleMan5000: I started gaming on a BBC micro and a spectrum. Old enough.

Well, I was a grade schooler who thought the Genesis was way more mature than the SNES. I didn't fully appreciate the SNES until I was older and could admit that it just had a ton of really good games. Most of the games on the genesis were really geared towards kids, too, honestly.

The 16-bit consoles covered a lot of genres, but even shooters were mostly cartoony and kid-oriented. Sony was the first console manufacturer who really had much success targeting adults. Sega tried pretty hard with the Saturn and Dreamcast, but they never really captured that market. I never really noticed a lot of adults playing games until Sony started selling the PS2 as a cheap DVD player.

@PurpleMan5000: The talk amongst my friends was all about the two consoles at the time. (PC was seperate and seen as the true god but expensive) and I never came across SNES being seen as more kiddy.

im not discounting that it was geared towards kids,there were a lot of titles that were appealing to kids, but they also had their share of more teenage action packed games. one that comes to my mind was smash tv.

what i meant was that the majority of gamers grew up and still continued gaming but is largely ignored by nintendo. some people dont like mario and zelda as much as they did when they were kids. nintendo doesnt cater to those gamers. they still want to keep attracting kids and gamers that still enjoy mario and zelda. they dont have anything for the cod crowd, the uncharted, the halo, the gears and gta crowd. that was my point.

My favorite 16-bit era games were Super Mario World (kids), Mega Man X (kids), Sonic (kids), TMNT (kids), Rocket Knight (kids), TLOZ (kids), Super Punch Out! (kids), Donkey Kong Country (kids), Star Fox (kids), and Street Fighter 2 (adults, OMG don't let mom see it!)

The existence of a few adult-oriented games does not discount the fact that about 90% of the games on the SNES and Genesis were made for kids.

I also agree with you that Nintendo is still trying to attract kids and aren't doing what they need to do to get that GTA/COD audience. I think that kids are much more lucrative than the GTA/COD crowd, though, and that they just have done a very poor job of attracting their core demographic with the Wii U.

Typical Nintendo

Nintendo markets to kids and parents. Kids have no money. Parents only buy kids video games on birthdays and christmas hence poor game sales.

Sony/M$ target teens/adults. They have tons of money/jobs. They buy a lot more games.

This is why nintendo fails. They need to target people with money, not babies. Idiots.

I do agree with some of this for the most part. A happy medium would be nice overall, but I think the problem is more dynamic then just pushing towards the kids. They need to push further in that direction, but not in advertisements and stuff like that imo. They have went overboard on that already as you can see for every Ninty commercial out there. The games themselves need to serve to them, which is not what they have in their stable as of now. Not very many of their franchises scratch that itch of catering to a more independent and adventurous child, and go too close to the traditional family friendly child of the past. You could say that they are for everyone, but in reality they really aren't marketing wise compared to before. Most of the franchises are a throwback to simpler times, and in this age it is far from simplistic.

it's true.

people that grew up an mario link and the gang are in their 40's and the pokemon crowd is what? in thier late 20's and early 30's?

they need to make something new to appeal to kids not something their parents are into.

You mean this?

Namco Powerful Game Company, Sony Drops, Nintendo Collapses

That's not referring to market capitalization, the standard method used to determine the overall market value of a company, but instead uses different criteria: "growth, profitability, safety and scale." In terms of actual, current market capitalization...

Nintendo - $18,392.04 million

Sony - $16,736.97 million

...And that's for the whole of Sony, including the gaming, movie, music, electronic, laptop and mobile divisions, whereas Nintendo is just all gaming.

Nintendo isn't so much a "kiddie" company as it is a family-friendly one, just like how mobile games such as Angry Birds and Candy Crush are popular with adults despite looking "kiddie", and the same goes for the Wii in its heydey.

Nintendo have been known as a family-friendly company for over 30 years, ever since they released the Family Computer (i.e. the Famicom, otherwise known as the NES) in 1983. Ironically, they were mainly known for being an adult company before that (from selling cards to Yakuza gambling rings, to porno playing cards, to love hotels, and then shooting games), but the Famicom/NES is when they established the family-friendly image they're now known for.

Actually, the translation is more or less correct:

Nintendo: “We Haven’t Been Targeting Children Enough;” Thinking on How to Make the Company Stand up Again

Japanese forums are more or less reacting to his comments in exactly the same way as English forums, so it's highly unlikely there was any mistranslation.

we had very different experiences on the snes then. my games were far more on the mature side. i guess thats where it varies for people...my games were smash tv, killer instinct, stuff like that.

accessibility,marketting.

There just weren't very many of those games, though, compared to the games for kids. I'm sure that there are some Wii U owners out there whose favorite games on the platform are Darksiders 2, Mass Effect 3, Assassin's Creed, Injustice, and Arkham City/Origins. That doesn't change the fact that most of the people with the system are playing Mario, Wind Waker, and Pikmin, or the fact that Nintendo advertises it as a console for kids, just like they did the SNES.

The man has a point.

More and more ~9-12 year olds are playing CoD and Battlefield and leaving Mario behind while adults are playing Mario/Zelda out of a sense of nostalgia.