When Nintendo released its DS handheld, they discovered a virtual gold mine of new users-the casual gamers. By definition, a casual gamer is your everyday person who enjoys a simple and quick game for a few minutes of entertainment. The demographics of the casual gamer come from non-gamers, females and new comers to the world of gaming. Nintendo,s recent launch of their new line of casual games called, Touch Generations, is aimed at this market and hopes to draw many more new recruits into the casual gamer category.
Perrin Kaplan, vice president of marketing for Nintendo America said in comments made to Business Week, “It was really important to let people know these are pick-up-and-play games. Rather than launch different ad campaigns for each title and hope consumers would see how they might be related, we wanted to frame the games as something more than a one-of game for your mother."
The target group of people who aren,t usually associated with games-parents, busy career people, housewives, and older citizens are all of interest to Nintendo. Kaplan continued, “There’s a dormant group of gamers out there, and it behooves us to keep enticing and exciting gamers as they age. We asked, ‘How do we bring in people who have careers and families that take up their time? The industry is really healthy, really big. But it’s also very clubby. One of our goals was to target people entering the game world for the first time. It’s absolutely about tapping into emerging markets."
The emergence of the casual gamer is good for the gaming community, as it will force game developers into thinking outside the box. The rehash of shooters and WW2 titles that have flooded the market will have no foothold on these new gamers. New ideas will have to be thought out to attract this vast market of non-gamers and this is good news for everyone that is into games.
