Nintendo wants your Mom. Having fallen out of love with you, the house that Mario built has set its sights squarely on her. She's not alone as the object of their affection, though, joined by countless other mothers, seniors, and gaming skeptics. Gamers have been dumped, left to watch as Nintendo courts a bastion of mainstream consumers with casual titles and simplified franchises. Gone is the focus on traditional gaming, replaced by a desire to hone in on an untapped market of non-gamers. The result of this strategic shift by Japan's second largest company has been clear: categorical success at the cost of abandoning its core audience. Despite an insistence gamers haven't been forgotten in its swim to the mainstream, Nintendo is purposefully pushing aside those that comprise the core of its business in an effort to seduce the mass market.

Wii sales, which are driven largely by purchases from non-gamers, exist in stark contrast to the performance of previous Nintendo platforms. Much of this difference can be attributed to the company's dedication to develop and market games suited for a mainstream audience; in short, casual titles. Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day and Wii Sports replace hardcore titles like Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem and F-Zero GX. Certain titles do hold appeal to gamers, such as Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn; however, the effort to promote these games differs from their casual counterparts. Basic marketing and public relations demand targeting the audience for which your product is intended. In the case of a casual title like Wii Play, taking your message to the mainstream consumer makes the most sense. Nintendo did just that and the results were outstanding.

Similarly, a hardcore title such as Metroid Prime 3: Corruption ought to be aimed toward its intended audience--traditional gamers. Engaging games media and employing a campaign to reach the core audience would have been an ideal approach. Instead, Nintendo intently avoided showing the game to media and made a last-minute marketing campaign to highlight its release. The result has been distinct: Metroid Prime 3 has sold half of what the original Metroid Prime moved during the same amount of time. According to figures from NPD Group, Metroid Prime sold 700,000 copies in its first two months out in 2002; this is nearly twice as much as the 385,000 units of Metroid Prime 3 in the same number of days. Metroid Prime 3 is still a success, but the difference in sales is undeniable.

Lower sales certainly come as a result of poor marketing and a lack of consumer awareness or interest in the title. The marketing campaign for Metroid Prime 3 didn't even truly begin until a month before release, leaving little time for exposure. Former Vice President of Marketing Perrin Kaplan explained to MTV's Stephen Totillo the impetus behind this approach. "We are trying a couple different approaches," Kaplan stated, "and that is talking about products shortly before they are launched to really grab the attention of people at that moment." Perhaps the strategy works with mass market titles like Wii Play and Big Brain Academy, but hardcore games can't be handled this way. Gamers want information on games well in advance of release to decide whether they want to purchase them. Not working with media to get information to the intended audience--in this case, core gamers--is inviting under-performance at retail.

Accordingly, lower sales can also be attributed to poor public relations strategy. During Nintendo's summer 2007 preview event, Metroid Prime 3 was purposefully not shown to media in order to highlight the company's upcoming casual games line up. Limiting exposure to games media translated to less awareness and interest by hardcore gamers. Nintendo fundamentally misunderstands the role of games media and how they relate to gamers. Readers, such as yourself, come to journalists for information and opinion; providing resources to journalists to write about games is necessary in order to keep readers informed. Not working with games media causes a vital link in that chain to break. Failing to establish a working relationship with journalists means not giving them the resources for which to keep their readers informed. In the case of Nintendo, it means not keeping in touch with gamers.