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04.27.2007

The Nintendo Market
Recent analysts seem to imply that Nintendo is doing something bad for the games market, pulling in consumers that were formerly non-gamers and keeping them all to themselves.

While it's true that most of these newcomers are sticking to Nintendo's titles, as evident by the incredible sales numbers, I don't see how this is a bad omen for 3rd parties who want in on it.

Nintendo has done a fantastic job of taking a new approach to gaming and games marketing. This is why they have had success in pulling in the non-gamer audience.

If 3rd parties want to benefit from this new audience, they're going to have to adapt to what appeals to this new market. If a 3rd party is committed to pulling in the market that Nintendo has attracted, I don't see anything holdig them back.

Yes, it's true that the former non-gamers aren't likely to latch onto existing 3rd party products, but those products aren't targeted to the new audience. Games like GTA3 and Madden '08 are not the reason why non-gamers came to games when the Wii and DS were released.

This isn't rocket science. If you want a bigger piece of that pie that Nintendo helped bring in, then start designing your games for that pie slice. Otherwise, there's other perfectly good consoles to sell your next 2008 sports-game or huge IP sequel on.

I'm not an analyst by trade, I'm a developer. But the way I see it, 3rd parties haven't lost anything because of Nintendo's approach.

It has also been said that the projected lifespan of Nintendo's consoles are going to make it harder for 3rd parties to keep up. I think it's relevant to mention that the original Xbox was the last in the generation to be developed, and the Xbox 360 was the first of the next generation consoles.

I don't know why we're worried about the lifespan of Nintendo's consoles when they have a history of longer life than current industry competitors, despite the assumptions some like to draw from the hardware specifications.

A platform will live as long as new, marketable games continue to be released for it. 3rd parties can either help extend the life of the console by continuing to release quality titles (God of War 2 anyone?), or they can help kill it by halting development early.

-Josiah Colborn