Hello there

"Why is Nintendo Ignoring American Men?" is the title of the article with a subtitle of
"The Japanese Mind Is Not The American Mind"

At first I was agreeing with the author but I knew somehow it was more of a business decision than trying to cater to the American mind. I read in a recent Wired article interviewing the Nintendo's largest shareholder share his opinions on many of Nintendo's business history. What struck me the most was his remembrance of the US bombing Japan leading to his secret derogotary views of "fat" Americans. So maybe because of this I think this is one of the reasons why Nintendo acts the way the author of the tomshardware.com article describes.

But I think the reasons are more business and less historical. Looking at Nintendo's past entry into video games, the first ones I can remember are their black and white LCD hand-held games. Granted the technology isn't the same as today but they were quite innovative in releasing to market an all-in-one device with inputs and a specially made display for hand-held gaming fun. Since they heavily concentrated on fun, I think each specially made black-and-white LCD display for each particular game was made with cute and funny characters in comedic situations. I remember the displays for Donkey Kong, Mario Brothers, Super Mario Bros. and others were just all cute and funny. Also some of their games were based on previously created cute and funny characters which had some sort of global influence: Snoopy Tennis and Popeye. The main theme in all their games was cute and funny. But more importantly they chose those themes because the games would be simpler to develop and produce. Imagine if at the time Nintendo wanted to be more fluid with the animation to some sort of fancy game, they could probably do it but the technology to support it would be difficult to develop and increase research costs leading to higher production costs and an out-of-the-world expensive product to market. I'm very certain Nintendo made back a sizable profit from their black-and-white LCD hand-held games and as a result realized that the idea of building simple products which are cute and funny is key.

Fast forward to the Gameboy era and the beginning of the DS, again the games that always launch with the systems continued to show off the cute and funny characters but at the same time striking a balance with each system's better and advanced technologies. Granted there are some games that are more realistic than cartoon-ish but Nintendo always presents and associates themselves with cute and funny character games because looking at the past it always works.

If Nintendo started out in the US, I'm sure they would be more catering but then again I'm not even sure they would have survived. Look at Atari! :( I actually liked them tho but they never had any cool, cute and funny game character to associate themselves with. I think their business plan was sporadic in just making consoles and random games. I know Atari had Combat, Pac-Man, Space Invaders and some others but seriously those games were just rectangles with no real emotion. Nintendo cared not only for their console but for their games. They ensured their characters stood out, had background stories and most of all likability in the cute and funny department. The US's current attitude towards games for shoot-em-up's as claimed by the tomshardware.com article's author I think is just a small dent in Nintendo's marketing plans. 'Can't please 'em all but at least according to history they know they can please enough to make things work rewardingly enough for themselves.