joelcool7
02-10-2006, 01:34 AM
Nintendo Meets Oprah and Ellen
Today at D.I.C.E the reginator talked serious when it came to the downfall of the game industry. Reggie addressed the problem at hand the decline in the game market. With video gaming being an ever growing form of essential media. The market seems to be becoming frail.
Reggie had this to say“For the first time in our industry's existence, the number of blue chip recruits – males 10-14 – is actually declining, versus about twenty years of constant growth. If all we do is target men and boys, this industry will decline. The only way to reverse that would be to make gaming more popular, but data suggests that's not happening."
Just a few weeks ago Nintendo announced a deal with a British senior citizens magazine to push Brain Age to seniors across Europe and according to today's speech Nintendo wasn't the only company thinking about training our brains. "Two weeks ago, Time Magazine was talking about the importance of training your brain, speaking mainly to later baby boomers. Now, imagine a gaming company talking about appealing to that demographic, people approaching 50 to 60. That’s what we’re doing. What we've been able to do, in Japan, is to draw appeal of video gaming into a whole new segment that typically wouldn't pick up a video game.”
Nintendo is taking a strategy that is being referred to a lot by media as the "Blue Ocean" strategy which focuses on expanding a market and entering parts of the market where there is no direct competition. The exact opposite of the Blue Ocean strategy is called the Red Ocean strategy which focuses on domination over already existing markets. Nintendo's choice to innovate and target untargeted audiences make Nintendo the prime example of Blue Ocean with a company like Sony being a perfect example of Red Ocean.
All In all Nintendo's announcements about targeting seniors comes as no surprise for anyone who knows much about Nintendo. However to top things off Nintendo shocked many when Reggie announced “The marketing for these titles in critical. You won't see ads on MTV. We'll be marketing by going on daytime TV, partnering with Oprah, Ellen…totally unheard of for video games, but fundamentally what needs to be done to reach new audience.”
Today at D.I.C.E the reginator talked serious when it came to the downfall of the game industry. Reggie addressed the problem at hand the decline in the game market. With video gaming being an ever growing form of essential media. The market seems to be becoming frail.
Reggie had this to say“For the first time in our industry's existence, the number of blue chip recruits – males 10-14 – is actually declining, versus about twenty years of constant growth. If all we do is target men and boys, this industry will decline. The only way to reverse that would be to make gaming more popular, but data suggests that's not happening."
Just a few weeks ago Nintendo announced a deal with a British senior citizens magazine to push Brain Age to seniors across Europe and according to today's speech Nintendo wasn't the only company thinking about training our brains. "Two weeks ago, Time Magazine was talking about the importance of training your brain, speaking mainly to later baby boomers. Now, imagine a gaming company talking about appealing to that demographic, people approaching 50 to 60. That’s what we’re doing. What we've been able to do, in Japan, is to draw appeal of video gaming into a whole new segment that typically wouldn't pick up a video game.”
Nintendo is taking a strategy that is being referred to a lot by media as the "Blue Ocean" strategy which focuses on expanding a market and entering parts of the market where there is no direct competition. The exact opposite of the Blue Ocean strategy is called the Red Ocean strategy which focuses on domination over already existing markets. Nintendo's choice to innovate and target untargeted audiences make Nintendo the prime example of Blue Ocean with a company like Sony being a perfect example of Red Ocean.
All In all Nintendo's announcements about targeting seniors comes as no surprise for anyone who knows much about Nintendo. However to top things off Nintendo shocked many when Reggie announced “The marketing for these titles in critical. You won't see ads on MTV. We'll be marketing by going on daytime TV, partnering with Oprah, Ellen…totally unheard of for video games, but fundamentally what needs to be done to reach new audience.”