Teachings of the Wii Generation

I want you all to consider what I am about to suggest to you. You people seem to want what we've got. Well, we have room for you. We have room for you and about 30 of your friends. You would be students of course, but you'd also be teachers. ” – Walter (Brian Dennehy) – Cocoon (1985)

How do you win in the PC/CE industry? Every engineer…every marketing “expert” knows the answer. You give ‘em more. More features. More fun. More quality. More bells. More whistles. You give ‘em less. Lower cost. That’s the way the gaming industry does it and conventional wisdom (don’t you love that word?) “proves” it works.

After all, “everyone” knows gamers are 14-24 year old guys who:

• love the smell of napalm in the morning and squealing tires
  
• want their women overly endowed and ready for action
  
• like their mechanical and alien competitors big, ugly and without conscience
  
• can sit in their dank rooms 4-8 hours straight without bathing or relieving themselves
  

You may think of this stuff as simply…games.
To the hardware/software folks involved…it’s serious stuff!
Right now the market is on track to become a $50+ billion global business.

Even by MS standards that’s not chump change!

Ok so it’s big…huge even.

So how would you have like to have been the guys who bounded into Iwata-san’s (now president) and Yamauchi-san’s (founder and CEO until 2002) offices and said you wanted to develop game systems that wouldn’t compete with Sony’s PS or Microsoft’s Xbox? They want to develop this people-oriented system that anyone could buy and play.

They wanted it kid and adult friendly. They wanted to call it something that was part of the family. How about…Wii? Bad idea?

While MS and Sony were pushing the fast track, Nintendo took the road less traveled.

Game reviewers fought each other to write the most glowing coverage possible for the powerhouse Sony, MS systems. Words flowed in adrenalin fashion over the systems and the games. Reviewers flipped coins to see who would review the Nintendo Wii. The losers got stuck with the job. But something went awry in the brilliant MS/Sony planning and reviewer accolades.

As Walter/Dennehy said… “Every 10 or 11,000 years I make a horrible mistake.”

Time to step back and look how and why Nintendo tapped a market that logic (don’t you love that word?) says wasn’t there. It’s a shift in the post-modern world that can help the entire PC/CE. The signs were there…we just didn’t pay any attention. The Internet and gaming isn’t a 20+ stud domain! Truth is:

• 18-49 gamers are only 44% of the market. 56% is “other” (see Figure 3)
• nearly 52% of the internet users are female (see Figure 4)
  
• 54% of the online game players are female
  
• 66% of females watch videos online
  
• 75%+ of the online gamers are women
• Women are different from men (surprise!)
  
• Older & younger players like to interact with others

Faith Popcorn, president of BrainReserve, identified two concepts – clicking (pinpointing lifestyle trends) and cocooning (retreating into the home and doing things as a family) years ago. She identified females and families as a dominant force – for long term sales – in the market. Sometimes referred to as the Nostradamus of marketing, her work and predictions rang true for Nintendo and software/online subscription services have gotten the message. Maybe the rest of the industry will follow suit!

The world’s demographics are in an important transition:

• Nearly 1/5th of Japanese and Italians are 65+…and its increasing. The US with 12% age 65 or older ranks 15th in this category
  
• Aging is proceeding rapidly. Japan doubled its percentage in 26 years and the acceleration is even grater in Brazil, Singapore and Thailand
  
• 60% of the women 75+ are widows in Australia, Malaysia, Croatia
• Older Canadian women living alone increased 8x between 1961 – 2001
  
• By 2050 nearly 1.5 billion will be 65+ and an almost equal number will be 0-14
  

The big guns in gaming – Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo – are following different paths.

Come on face it. Gaming is a sideline to MS and Sony. Their agendas aren’t really to give you heart pounding, sweaty palm game action! They want their systems as your home entertainment hubs. If you happen to play a game now and then…great. But they are adding the features, capabilities and connections you need around the house. Complex stuff they “know” you need. You know:

• Connection to your TV
  
• Internet surfing
  
• Connection to your stereo
  
• Connection to your refrigerator, stove
• PC “things” (remember MS wants to rule your world!)
  

Nintendo? They want you to have fun! They’ve got stuff that:

• is multiplayer, community focused
  
• is of interest to the casual gamer (the majority of us)
• gets you off your fat *** and lets you participate with more than your fingers
  
• makes it fun on a casual, communal, friendly level
  

The rest of the population? Well as Walter/Dennehy said… “I promise you, you will all lead productive lives.”

Seems to us that Iwata-san was a brain surgeon and Yamauachi-san was a rocket scientist. The guys who suggested the Wii and DS were more than just snake oil sales people. The Nintendo approach so far has shown that the Swiss-army PC/CE solution may get a techie’s pulse racing but doesn’t get everyone into the pool. Consumers – around the globe – want personal products and solutions that they can easily optimize for specific applications, specific activities. Certainly we could be wrong.

Or as Ben Luckett said in Cocoon, “Well there is the one school of thought that says they don't know nothing.”

It’s time that PC/CE companies takes a closer look at the Nintendo phenomenon and implements those lessons that apply for their firm. After all the lowest common denominator must know something. There are so many of them and…their numbers are increasing !!

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