Video Games Aiming for the “Massive Market”

by on 19 April, 2006 - 09:17

by: Karl Long

“Brain Age” is here, and yes it’s a video game, but it’s not aiming for what would normally be considered the mass market of boys 18-30 or “gamers”, it’s going for the “massive market” of people who want to “train their brain”.

With tag lines like:

For decades Nintendo has been exercising your thumbs. Now they’re going to exercise your mind.

and

Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day.

Nintendo is essentially turning market perception on it’s head, positioning the video game as positive “mental exercise”, as opposed to the common perception of it being a pointless, mind numbing activity. Not only does the game act as a diagnostic tool, by testing your “brain age”, but as a training tool to help lower your brain age, the idea being that a younger brain age is better for your mental health.

As was mentioned in the excellent escapist article the gaming community treated the Nintendo DS (dual screen with a stylus) as a bit of a joke, the graphics were sub par to competing systems, and the interface was kind of clunky and the two screens…. well it didn’t fit the handheld gaming mold. But with a game like Brain Age suddenly the Nintendo DS could become a household name with baby boomers that might not have even heard of Nintendo before. Talk about Word of Mouth, if it starts to gain traction in the 50+ market as a way to stave off something as awful as alzeimers people like me are going to be buying Nintendo DS’s for my parents.

(screenshot from the Brain Age site, not your average gamers)

It seems that Brain Age is squarely aimed at the “grey market” of baby boomers, but it seems that Nintendo is following it up with one aimed at kids called “Big Brain Academy” (originally called Brain Flex I think, but the addition of the word “academy” sure aims to create position this tool as making you or your kids “smarter”).

Original Post: http://customersonfire.com/archive/video-games-aiming-for-the-massive-market/

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