DFC Intelligence by way of Next-Gen has an exhaustive feature exploring the secret to Nintendo’s success, at least on the handheld side of things. They say great casual games pay most of Nintendo’s portable bills.
“Nintendo’s secret – the one that the others don’t quite get – is that it is essentially a maker of casual games. The DS’s success illustrates this perfectly, capturing that most casual of markets – portable gaming – with ruthless efficiency.”
I don’t completely disagree. It’s perhaps one of the biggest differentiators between Nintendo games and others. So are casual games what Nintendo does best?
Yeah, casual gaming does have to do with big N’s success. Games like Tetris DS, Mario Kart DS, even the Virtual Console games, are quick little games I can pick up and play for a few minutes and get my jollies off it and enjoy myself. A game that bogs you down with hours and hours of gameplay isn’t quite something I want to get stuck with, I want a game that I can pick and play and just have a blast with, and the DS (and the Wii to an extent) do this beautifully.
Nintendo has learned their lesson well from their Game and Watch days, and they have improved upon it with mini-games galore that can be played on many Nintendo consoles.
Nintendo isn’t a casual game creator. Nintendo tries for quality and makes games that actually have a unique thing for it. Sometimes they games really suck, but you can say nothing about their level of quality.
Maybe true, but the DS is also a great platform for really long RPG gaming. The fact that you can just close it and keep going, or that you can quickly save and load your games, make it also a great portable for epic gaming. I think its hardware design covers both fronts!
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Yeah, nintendo make great casual games that you can play for ten minutes before you have to go out somewhere, but aren’t we forgetting a few things.
Zelda anyone? How about Mario? Yeah Nintendo make great casual games, and thay may, well they probably do, contribute significantly to Nintendo’s coffers. But With the amount of copies of games like Zelda, Mario and Metroid they sell, I’d argue that they’re just as, if not more significant. Let’s not forget why we love the Big N in the first place!