Nintendo and Microsoft wake up to families

Parents seeking family-friendly videogames will appreciate the tech giants' forray into the 'mom market' for videogames.

from the June 13, 2007 edition

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Often, the difference has little to do with quality. Years ago, VHS beat Beta as a video format, although Betamax was far better. Mac users are more than happy to tell you why Apple is much better than Windows, but Windows has 90 percent of the market. Nintendo beats Sony and Microsoft, although the latter two game consoles are widely seen as better and more powerful machines.

Pricing and approach often make the difference. In each case above, the devices that won or now lead their markets offered a product that was cheaper and easier to use than its rivals. Nintendo's game console doesn't have the computing power of the Sony or Microsoft products, but it does have a pricing advantage – it costs $100 to $200 less. When you add Wii's ease of use and games that appeal to more than a narrow male demographic, you have a situation where marketing adroitness and innovation beat muscle and power.

This approach hurts Sony in particular. After a long ride at the top with the popular PlayStation 2 (the game console in my house), industry experts expected PlayStation 3 to continue its domination of the market. Instead, it has sputtered and stalled (its high price hasn't helped much), and Sony has experienced a meteoric drop from it long-held top spot in the gaming world. Steve Smith, writing at the Monsters and Critics website, says that if Sony doesn't shake this "loser" image, it could carry over to the next iteration, PS4. That would be a real problem for the company.

As a parent, I cheer Microsoft's effort to create games for the entire family. If you care about the games your children play, you probably want them to do more than just blow stuff up. It also has been a real chore for parents to find games that they think are suitable and that children won't view as boring or "uncool."

Indeed, I always find it puzzling why businesses other than Nintendo don't realize that parents are constantly searching for appropriate games, music, clothing, etc. Hollywood has finally started to realize that, "Hey – families go to movies, so maybe we should give them a few movies to go and see." If the success of the Wii means that other video-game console makers decide to include families in their business plans, that's fine by me.

In an article last week in Bloomberg News, Albert Penello, director of Xbox global platform marketing, said he realizes his company needs to start reaching out to this demographic or risk being "pigeonholed as a hard-core machine." If fear of being pigeonholed means my family can get more use out of an Xbox than our PlayStation 2, I will be more than happy to switch.

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