While Nintendo expressed its intention to cater to both core and casual gamers with its DS and Wii strategies, many fans have expressed concerns that Nintendo may leave them behind for the casual market. We’ve heard promises from Reggie that this will never happen, who cited this year’s launches of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Super Mario Galaxy, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Shigeru Miyamoto, on the other hand, says that the core and casual markets can really be the same thing.
By creating the Wii remote, Nintendo partially wanted to start everyone off at a brand new starting line. It brings new players in with its simplicity, and offers traditional gamers some new challenges. One complaint core gamers have had about the casual games is not the control schemes, but the length and difficulty. Mr. Miyamoto says that if Nintendo can strive to make a new game fun, that both the core and casual audiences will embrace a new game like Super Mario Galaxy.
“What I mean is that there is no point in making a difficulty level the fun factor of a game. We are making Super Mario Galaxy as a new and fun experience which aims at providing a very appealing, convincing and—before all—fun experience. If we managed to do so, then I’m sure even the core gamers will find it appealing.
“We need to release more games which feel like games. It is important that people who are playing them feel that the games are indeed fun to play… Now there is this concept I always focus on, which is you have to feel the fun of a game by only trying it, and that concerns Super Mario Galaxy, of course. Should it be fun by only playing it a short time, this indicates already it has a big value as a product… It is very important that the full fun of the game is being felt in the first stage 1-1.”
Finding the balance to make a game fun, addictive, and challenging isn’t hard…but this isn’t a Flash game or mobile phone game. To pull it off on a console, and to do it consistently, would be a breakthrough for big production games.
