Video-game companies are trying harder than ever to turn new players into lifelong gamers. Half of Americans are gamers, but a lot of the unfaithful just don’t see the appeal of expensive game consoles. The game companies want to convert them.
One answer is new technology. Not the kind that delivers better and bolder graphics. Instead, companies are embracing technologies for creatively inspired accessories that plug into game consoles and offer users new freedom in how they interact with the machine.
This quest to entice nongamers or casual gamers into the fold played out at the E3 conference in Santa Monica, Calif., last week.
“The goal is to make games irresistible,” said Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of America.
No one is driving this more than his company. Nintendo’s Wii console has been sold out every one of the 33 weeks that it has been on sale, thanks to the innovative game controller that senses motion, such as when the player takes a swipe at a baseball.
Wednesday, Nintendo introduced a device dubbed a “Wii balance board.” It measures your weight, body mass index, posture and center of gravity, giving you a reason to stand naked in front of your game console (if you really want to).
The board goes with a new game for fall, “Wii Fit,” which forces gamers to go through all sorts of exercises while they’re playing games, from butting soccer balls with their heads to posing in yoga moves.
“Games like this for the mass market are now the target, not the afterthought,” said Billy Pidgeon, an analyst at International Data. “Nintendo changed the game.”
Nintendo also introduced two other clever pieces of plastic – the Wii driving wheel and the Wii Zapper – which enable players to drive cars or shoot guns more easily using natural gestures instead of pressing a lot of buttons. In the past, accessories consisted of extra controllers or memory cards. Now they’re getting new gamers involved.
While Sony and Microsoft go after the hard-core gamers first and then expand, Nintendo is starting with the nongamers and casual gamers, working its way inward back to the hard-core. The two rivals recognize this threat, but they’re in tough spots because their consoles are so much more expensive than Nintendo’s $250 Wii and $129 hand-held DS. The Wii Zapper will sell for a mere $19.95.
The combination of low cost and clever ideas is turning Nintendo into a steamroller. Fils-Aime revealed a few tidbits that prove this: Nintendo’s new console and hand-held DS account for 69 percent of the growth of the video-game market in the past year. And a third of Nintendo’s new systems are being bought by women, compared with just 20 percent in 2005.
And the Japanese game market, stagnant for eight years, has grown 114 percent this year. Nintendo leads there. Nintendo is now setting the industry’s direction.
