Carlton Smith has two Nintendo Co. GameCubes – and both are stashed in a closet.
The 32-year-old Los Angeles set builder bought the spare console for his son, but 9-year-old C.J. wants to play sports games only on PlayStation 2 and Xbox like his dad.
“GameCube is a kid’s box,” said Smith, who has owned more than a dozen different game consoles since 1984, when he bought an Atari 2600. “I haven’t played it for a year, and my son just wants to play what I play.”
Once the undisputed leader of the video game industry, Nintendo has tried without much success to reverse the persistent impression that its flagship GameCube is more a toy than a serious game machine. It has lost much of the 90 percent market share it once enjoyed to Sony Corp., which makes PlayStation, and Microsoft Corp., which makes Xbox.
Nintendo now holds 19 percent of the console market. But the Japanese company, which also makes the popular Game Boy hand-held players, is attempting to regain some momentum with its next console.
Perhaps as important as the technical specifications of the console code-named Revolution, though, is the revolution inside Nintendo as it reaches out to older gamers who grew up playing Nintendo games but then outgrew Mario.
“Nintendo needs to figure out early on what they want to be when they grow up,” said P.J. McNealy, an analyst at American Technology Research Inc. “Granted, they’re the oldest and most storied company in the sector but they have yet to truly scale up as the market gets older.”
The company has sponsored headbanging concerts, held hip celebrity parties and produced ads featuring the rock band Good Charlotte. Nintendo also tapped Reginald Fils-Aime, a 42-year-old marketing whiz from Viacom Inc.’s MTV, to head its North American operations in Redmond.
Fils-Aime had no experience in the games industry before he came to Nintendo 18 months ago, but he had a long resume of marketing products to young, hip consumers. At MTV, he helped beef up young audience viewership of the VH1 channel and boost overall ratings by 30 percent from 2001 to 2003. Fils-Aime, born in the Bronx borough of New York, also worked in marketing at Pizza Hut Inc., Guinness Import Co. and Procter &Gamble Co.
“We believe the 16- to 20-year-old demographic is the right one to shoot for,” Fils-Aime said, “because they drive not just the spending within this category but also the image.”
The company plans to give its next console – due out next year – a sleek design to replace the GameCube’s toylike look. It will also campaign hard for outside developers to make more mature games for the new box.
That’s crucial because many gamers who, like Smith, cut their teeth on Nintendo’s Mario and Zelda games have grown up and moved on to more mature titles such as “Halo” and “Grand Theft Auto.” Sixty percent of PlayStation 2 owners, for instance, are over 18 years old. For GameCube, it’s 40 percent.
“The average gamer is over 20 and getting older,” said Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities.
McNealy noted that Nintendo lacked titles for older players early in the life of the GameCube. By the time mature games such as “Resident Evil 4” and “Metroid Prime” were released for GameCube, the kiddie image was cemented in people’s minds.
Nintendo has had trouble persuading independent game developers to make mature titles for the GameCube. Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., for example, released “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” on PlayStation 2 and Xbox but not GameCube.
“It’s remarkable to me how many games are made for PS2 and Xbox but not GameCube,” Pachter said. “If they don’t reverse that trend, they will have a problem.”
Los Angeles Times
Carlton Smith and his son, C.J., play a basketball game on Microsoft’s Xbox. Smith, 32, of Los Angeles has fond memories growing up with Nintendo games, but no longer plays with his two Nintendo GameCubes.
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