Sure Nintendo has put a lot of Wii’s in a lot of homes over the past couple years, but if a recent report by Nielsen Research is to be believed, nobody’s playing them. The report notes that only 6 percent of Wii users are playing the system actively, the other 94 percent aren’t using the system much at all.
You Can’t Stay Casual Forever
So what’s going on? I have one theory: when it comes to casual users, they either stay casual forever or eventually they become refined users.
The drawback to Nintendo’s blue ocean strategy is that the casual market is inherently an entry market. To use a metaphor, Nintendo is selling a product to infant users. As infants, there’s only two ways for them to go. Users can stay infants or they can grow up.
If they stay infants then they stay casual – for good. And as truly casual users, that means they aren’t going to play your system very often (likely at parties and social occasions), they aren’t going to buy very many games or non-brand games (non-Nintendo made games) and they are unlikely to buy system upgrades (the refinements to the Wiimote are going to be a hard sell).
As I’ve argued before, the original Wii sports was highly successful in getting these users to make a purchase based on its transformative experience. Unfortunately for Nintendo, for most of these users, Wii Sports is enough to satisfy their infrequent gaming needs – and things like Wii Sports Resort don’t appear different enough to be appealing.
Infant Gamers Grow Up
On the other side of the coin, some infants eventually grow up. That means users graduate from casual gaming to more refined gaming. Again, unfortunately for Nintendo, the needs of these users are not sufficiently met by the Wii. Ultimately, as these users become more accustomed to the norms of gaming, things like Wii Music appear too simplistic to say something like Guitar Hero.
That’s not to say that Nintendo has no games for this audience – there’s Mario Galaxy, Punch Out and others – it’s just that there aren’t enough of these games. Another inherent risk with infants who grow up is that they will start trying other systems and other games. Users being siphoned to other systems is only half the problem for Nintendo – another large issue is that as these gamers try other systems, they become accustomed to these system’s play styles and controllers.
By my own experience, what eventually happens, is that as a refined gamer, you begin to find Nintendo’s offering somewhat lackluster – both from a game level and a playability level. As a refined gamer, you start looking for bigger, longer games with more exceptional experiences – something the other consoles do quite well. And, as some of my friends would agree, you begin to say to yourself while playing a Wii game, “this is alright, but I’d like to play it with a regular controller.”
Even with the refined control of the Wiimote, I suspect it won’t be enough to convince refined gamers. Sure, the remote has some interesting input capabilities that mimic real-life interaction, but it also has its drawbacks. No one I know wants to be waving a controller around, all the time.
If I were Microsoft or Sony, that’s something I would be thinking about pretty hard before committing too much to their own waggle technology. Same goes for making casual games – it’s a huge market, sure – but it’s an unstable market that will possibly ignore your new games out of indifference, or worse, starting playing the competition’s games out of boredom.
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