Venerable market leader really plays its cards right

Apr 17 2008 by Carri Cunliffe, The Journal

THEY say it often pays to listen to a wise old head. So what can the video games industry learn from the oldest in the business?

Last week, Nintendo was ranked number one in industry magazine Develop’s list of the world’s 100 most successful game developers.

Formed in 1889, the company originally sold Hanafuda (flower) Japanese playing cards in Kyoto.

After emerging as one of the biggest forces in games in the 1980s, the firm had less successful years as it struggled against the might of Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox. Recently, though, it has enjoyed a renaissance through the wild success of its handheld DS console and the Nintendo Wii, which have sold more than 85 million units.

So what’s the secret behind Nintendo’s revival? The most obvious answer is that it makes great games. But then, so do many others. A great console then? Yes, but Xbox and PS3 are excellent, and more advanced than Wii.

No, where Nintendo has really played its cards right is in its focus – through hardware and software – on making gaming accessible to an untraditional audience.

Wii, for example, is designed so it’s easy for non-gamers to use, with actions required to control games often mimicking real-life movements, such as bowling or playing tennis. Nintendo’s most successful recent software is also unconventional. There have been huge sales of Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training, which tests brain power rather than ‘how many aliens can you shoot?’.

What the industry can learn is that not just technology and graphics make games attractive.

Far more attention is now being paid to other elements, such as strong storytelling, building communities around games and making them accessible.

Carri Cunliffe is head of sector development at Codeworks GameHorizon, a games companies network (www.gamehorizon.net)