Nintendo: Calling All Players

The maker of the Wii now aims to capture both die-hards and newly hooked casual gamers, possibly blurring the line between the two audiences

by Kenji Hall

It's hard not to notice that Nintendo (7974.T) is targeting the mainstream. The company had made that message the focus of its annual game showcase last year, and this year's event, on Oct. 10, was no different. Alongside its grey-on-white logo, Nintendo displayed towering ads showing trim, smiling kids and adults in different action poses while playing with the Wii video game console's latest accessory, the Wii Fit board. And when Nintendo Chief Executive Officer Satoru Iwata strolled onstage, he made sure to reinforce the point for his audience of journalists, bloggers, game developers, and TV cameras. "The Wii has brought change to the industry by appealing to a wide range of users," Iwata told the gathering at Makuhari Messe, a convention hall just to the east of Tokyo.

But this year Iwata also took aim at a sector that Nintendo hasn't had much success with lately: hard-core gamers. To the surprise of many, the Nintendo chief revealed that the Wii would soon add to its library Capcom's Monster Hunter series and two new titles in the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles series from Square Enix. Capcom and Square Enix are both traditionally Sony (SNE) allies.

Tearing Down the Wall

Landing those titles could help change the Wii's image as a machine that's too low-powered to handle the industry's most advanced games. "Monster Hunter represents the cutting edge of gaming technology," says Hirokazu Hamamura, president of Tokyo-based game market research firm Enterbrain. "It's symbolic. I didn't think the Wii could handle this type of game. Everyone in the room today saw that it can."

Iwata is offering more to ordinary consumers as well. Nearly a year after being released last November, the console—whose motion-sensing remote lets players swing it like a tennis racket or point-and-shoot it like a gun—is still in short supply at many stores in Japan, the U.S., and Europe. So Iwata offered them something to look forward to as well. He declared that Nintendo would "tear down the wall" between games for ordinary consumers and the hard-core community.

That means coming up with games that don't necessarily require dexterous digits but still have complex inner worlds. Making a game that is so fun it's addictive won't hurt either. Iwata said demographic data for Legend of Zelda: Twilight Prince, which went on sale last November, suggests that the game is appealing to both casual and serious gamers.

Praise from Analysts and Developers

Appealing to both types of gamer is a contrarian approach that wins points with many developers. "I have only the utmost respect for Nintendo's marketing strategy," says Yoshimi Yasuda, CEO of Tokyo-based developer Tecmo. Analysts praise Nintendo, too, using the kind of superlatives that seem fitting for a company that now has the second-largest market capitalization in Japan, behind automaker Toyota Motor (TM). In recent months, NikkoCitigroup raised its earnings forecasts for Nintendo, saying it now expects the company's operating earnings to soar 82%, to $3.5 billion, on a 51% jump in sales, to $12.5 billion this fiscal year through March, 2008. On Oct. 10, Nintendo's shares closed up nearly 5%, at a record high of 65,800 yen ($562).