Iwata: Casual Focus a “Misunderstanding

Nintendo, for the past two generations of home consoles it’s been blighted with problems. With the Gamecube it managed to secure a “kiddy” image, with games that tended to either be more family friendly, or just lacked the violence and death of Halo, GTA and other titles in comparison to Zelda, Metroid and Mario. With the Nintendo Wii, unfortunately a lot of this image moved across due to the family friendly focus. Yet, Nintendo have now announced that this family friendly, or casual gamer, focus is a “misunderstanding”.

Iwata, the top dog at Nintendo Japan and therefore Nintendo Worldwide, has gone on record as stating:

There was a misunderstanding that Nintendo was dedicated to such games at some stage of the lifespans of the Wii and the Nintendo DS. We have made efforts to develop video games that are in tune with various consumer tastes; however, we have not been able to gain adequate consumer understanding regarding our intentions, while in the common perception there are no or few core users playing Nintendo platforms, which is not the case.

This casual focus has been reinforced by Nintendo various times over the years, with Wii Fit, Wii Fit Plus, the ease of Mario Kart Wii and even the way the Wii has been advertised on TV with Ant and Dec, The Saturday’s and One Direction as marketeers for their consoles. With the 3DS Nintendo have seemingly dropped the celebs and put far more attention on the product and they will need to have a balance between celebs and product adverts if they are going to pacify the core-gamer.

That and far more games. Lots more.

To read the full interview go here.