Is Nintendo really abandoning the “core gamer”?

By Stephen Munn | July 18, 2007

Nintendo is aware that industry domination cannot be done without us.

When Nintendo’s genre innovation strategy first came to light with the revelation of what became the Wii Remote, there was no small amount of great thought on the matter, as Paul noticed back in September of ‘05. The mentioned article by DANC at LostGarden makes a great argument.

Is Iwata-san spouting nonsense or is Nintendo actually onto something?

At the time, my assumption was that it was all corporate hot air, an attempt to rationalize what first might appear to be a panicked flail in a random direction by their hardware design team. It wasn’t long before people started to speculate that this could spell the end for Nintendo’s core gamer. Some had trouble accepting that Nintendo could do traditional games with these all-new controllers. Remember that this was before Twilight Princess was announced for Wii, before anyone knew about Wii Sports. All we had was a console called Revolution and now, a controller that didn’t look like a controller.

So today, in 2007, in the shadow of E3, I ask those who think that Nintendo’s abandoned the core gamer: Isn’t turnabout fair play?

In the latest podcast at The Wiire, of which I am a devoted listener, the argument is made that Nintendo is getting ready to abandon the core gamer. Once the games that were already in development before the Wii’s success on games like Wii Sports (games like Metroid Prime 3, Super Mario Galaxy, and Super Smash Bros Brawl) have been produced, we will not see any more of these epic “core” games coming from Nintendo, because the casual games are far more profitable. Nintendo has said a number of times, including at the E3 2007 press conference, of a desire to redefine what being a gamer is really about. Are they talking about excluding the core so they can profit more strongly on the more accessible games?

I honestly don’t think so. When Satoru Iwata was talking about what it means to be a gamer, he was talking about how everyone was new at some point, and the complex mechanics of core games today are daunting and prohibitive to anyone who hasn’t grown up with the genre, playing each slightly-more-complicated episode of the dominating franchises in each genre.

To use Nintendo’s franchises as examples, consider The Legend of Zelda. The original NES Legend of Zelda game had the same general concept that Twilight Princess had in 2006: become stronger, explore dungeons, gather tools, defeat enemies, and rescue those in need. That same story is told in much greater detail and complexity now, using (in the case of the Gamecube version) a busy, colorful controller with more than a dozen separate controls on it in various combinations that aren’t even remotely intuitive to someone who hasn’t played the Zelda franchise from start to finish, or at least other games in the same genre. The doors to a Zelda game are closed to those who are new, so how do you get more people playing Zelda, while still keeping those who already buy every Zelda game (that would be me)?

It’s pretty simple. You create lots of brand new, super-accessible games on the flashy new console that shares the Zelda franchise. People who’ve never played games, or haven’t in a long time, go to the store and buy a game console and go home and play Wii Sports bowling on their TV, and have a blast, because it’s fun. The simplicity of the game isn’t a turn-off to these people because they didn’t get over simple video games 20 years ago. They are still “young” in that sense. The idea is that once they tire of Wii Sports, they will play another game. That might be Big Brain Academy. It might be Trauma Center. And if the controls are intuitive and make sense to these people who wouldn’t want a complex experience, eventually they will want something deeper. At some point down the line, they’ll play Super Mario Galaxy and the world of these “core” games will open up to a larger audience. Add in simple control schemes on top of the more detailed ones, as in the EA Sports “family play” concept, and you’ve got everyone covered.

That is the bet that Nintendo has made, anyway.

This is the strategy that Nintendo has used to escape the slide of the gaming market. As DANC at LostGarden said, the market became too specialized, and Nintendo could not compete with those who had mastered the hardcore. What DANC could not have known almost two years ago is that Nintendo’s strategy has, to date, been an unbelievable success.

I asked if turnabout was fair play because the core gamer abandoned Nintendo long ago for the PlayStation 1. Accusing them of abandoning the hardcore is pretty hollow in that light. Further, let’s look at what some of the games on the platform are doing.

Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition is, at its most basic, a port of the PS2 version of RE4 with IR pointer aiming integrated and some motion controls involving the knife. Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles is an on-rails light gun shooting arcade game. Both of these are Wii games, neither should appeal to the casual gamer, and still, they persist on Wii. RE4 came out last month, and is selling better than Capcom expected: I have yet to see it on the shelf in the store.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers is in development for the Wii, and early footage shows a deep, intensive single-player Japanese RPG. This is the kind of thing that is anathema to the casual gamer market. That is to say, it will be years before they’re ready for a game like that, and yet still, it persists on Wii.

Guilty Gear XX Accent Core is currently being fixed (there were serious bugs) and is on its way to the US market. This is a serious, hardcore, over-the-top fighting game with huge, detailed Japanese characters and complex move sets that even I will likely never master, let alone what it would do to a casual gamer. And yet still… well, you get the idea.

Notice a pattern? The third parties are there on Wii, and as a result, the core gamer has a lot of software to look at now, and to look forward to. These types of games are not for the new people on Wii… not yet, anyway.

I was also disappointed in Nintendo’s showing at E3, and I’ve thrown forth my own concerns on missing franchises for everyone to see. These games will come, even if they weren’t at E3.

So take a deep breath, core gamers. Nintendo knows we’re here, and so do the third parties. All of them know they can’t make money without us, and as long as we keep buying the traditional games, they’ll keep making them. That goes most strongly for Nintendo. Anyone who thinks Nintendo will simply “drop” any segment of their audience to focus on the others, letting even more people lose interest in their games, doesn’t give them enough credit. With all the mistakes made in the last ten years, there have to be plenty of people at that company who aren’t ready to forget where they’ve been. The Virtual Console’s existence is the biggest proof of this for me.

Look at it this way: we are the ones Nintendo is making games for, and the new people are the ones they’re trying to turn into core gamers. While you’re waiting for more core games, don’t be above giving the casual games a try. Wii Sports is a lot of fun.