Nintendo Unveils Casual Gamer Brand

The Guardian Gamesblog discusses the newly announced Touch Generation of games for Nintendo's consoles. From the article: "This is, of course, a pointless piece of product re-positioning, symptomatic of modern business's obsession with branding above and beyond the call of sense. More importantly though, it's about Nintendo reveling in its E3 success. It is about a company that has effectively spent the last decade in its own self-made ghetto, turning to the industry and saying, 'I told you so' ... The wider world is coming back to videogames - and Nintendo is speaking its language. Anyway, the first three new releases in the Touch Generations line-up will be Big Brain Academy, the second title in the brain-training series, Magnetica, a marble-based puzzler, and Sudoku Gridmaster, a Sodoku game with over 400 puzzles. They're out this summer."

Puzzle Games

[dancpsu]

I think Nintendo is realizing that puzzle games are the most effective games in the handheld realm. When you have a handheld gaming system, most likely you use it while waiting for something, and you want to be able to put it away at a moments notice. You don't want to have to tell someone to wait while you finish up a level, or fighting a boss.

Confusing and counter-productive

[atezun]

I highly doubt that you need to make a second brand to help casual gamers more readily adopt casual games. Usually casual games are far cheaper to begin with and usually give away the fact they are are rather simple concepts. I'd say a casual gamer is far less likely to look for a brand within a brand and far more likely to pick up an affordable title that looks enjoyable.

"Over 400 puzzles"?

[Jerf]

"Over 400 puzzles"? I sure hope they mean "over 400 variants" of Sudoku or something. (Variants can add up fast when you have multiple independent dimensions to vary on; remember the old Atari 2600 games that had "32" variants, which were just all combinations of 5 binary flags? "Shots bounce" vs. "Shots don't bounce", for instance. Oh, and don't forget the color variations!)

Solving Sudoku puzzles is moderately computationally intensive and maybe the DS shouldn't be doing that, but it ought to be able to generate them just fine, and an experienced Sudoku player who is also a decent programmer even ought to be able to make a good stab at varying the difficulty levels automatically. (It doesn't have to be *perfect*, just mostly effective.)

Otherwise that's a bit of a rip-off; as long as you're going to computerize your Sudoku you might as well get all-the-puzzles-you-can-eat. (And for that matter, open the field up to some of the more advanced variants, like the 4-version.)

Re:Brand Power to the Rescue!!

[Metsys]

"...Everyone else sees Nintendo as a waste of time for young boys. Nintendo is realises that seizing the new "casual gamer" market can't be done through that lens and so is providing the new customer a way to look at the product without thinking of Mario and classic video games."

This is absolutely true. How many parents do you hear talking about their lazy sons "playing their Nintendo," when they are really playing Halo, or any other game for that matter? Nintendo has such a strong mind share that it's a house hold name associated with video games. This is good, and every company wants that kind of mind share. Unfortunately, in the mind of most parents, Nintendo is a waste of time. I've heard that Nintendo's newest console is just going to be known as Wii, as compared to the Nintendo 64, Super Nentendo, Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo DS, etc. It'll be kind of hard to get those parents into gaming when they associate Nintendo with something bad. Image can make all the difference.