Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Sessler Soapbox - 3DS: An Uphill Battle
Adam Sessler is a man I respect. And usually I whole-heartedly agree with him. But here I think he fails to look ahead at the situation of the 3DS.
Nintendo have said that the 3DS and it's games are made with the more harder core gamers in mind, and I think the price and announced games from both Nintendo and third-parties go a long way towards proving that. What truly casual friendly titles have Nintendo spoken of? Nintendogs + Cats, likely to be available at launch, and maybe Paper Mario if only for the Mario name. But if they wanted to sell someone on the Mario name, they definitely could have gone with a more casual friendly title than Paper Mario. Nintendo hasn't prepped a WarioWare title which could really show off the hardware to a casual audience with games centered around the inward facing camera, the outward facing cameras, the motion sensing, the gryoscopic controls, the touch-screen, the micro-phone, the analog circle pad, to games that take advantage of the stereoscopic 3D. I believe this early focus on the harder core gamer market to be crucial in establishing that audience for the rest of the system's life-span, like Nintendo has theorized. Yes, $250 is expensive, but the 3DS is not yet meant for that casual audience that would be turned off by the price as Adam suggests. But Nintendogs is there for the portion of the casual audience that wants the next new thing more than they want a gaming device.
When Nintendo wants to go after that casual audience, they will (and I believe they already) have the room to drop the price, and have the games ready to attract them with ease.
What say you? Am I overlooking a big casual friendly title? Is Adam Sessler always a croc? Let me know in the comments.
EDIT: Ah, I just remember that more casual friendly Mario title I really overlooked: Mario Kart 3DS. And Animal Crossing 3DS as well.
Video here.
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@WesFX:
ReplyDeleteI wish Sessler and others would consider things like the iPod Touch, iPad, and other items like those...that people willingly drop $200+ dollars on, when talking about the 3DS.
I do think the 3DS could be sold for $200, and Nintendo would probably break even on it.
BUT, I do agree with Adam on the "old Nintendo" still being around feeling...if you remember, they touted the WiiConnect24 as some awesome idea...that is pretty much a failure and not even used for anything worthwhile.
Wii Speak = Failure...and it took Nintendo 4 YEARS to finally realize "Oh, well look at that, a headset will actually work better than our waste of time R&D product!"
I also agree with him that not having LOZ:OoT at release is really strange...again, it seems like their management is spread thin, and they need more people working on these things...or better time management.
@coffee
ReplyDeleteI think the main reason Apple's iDevice line can be sold at the prices they are sold at is both for the "cool" factor and because they do multiple things really well.
I actually believe Nintendo could sell the 3DS for as low as $150 and break even, simply because I just don't think they started off making the 3DS with the idea of making something that costs $200+ to make. It just doesn't seem like something they would do.
I'm not sure I understand what you were saying about the "old Nintendo". It feels like that first sentence is missing an important word or two.
@WesFX:
ReplyDeleteThe "old Nintendo", was supposed to be "the other Nintendo", as Sessler said in the video, referring to the business side of Nintendo.