Industrial Gaming 04 | The Nintendo Niche

So then, why did Mr. Gates surmise that Nintendo would become a niche player in the home console market? If you do a simple scratch-and-sniff with this statement it's a perfectly logical one; Nintendo have been holding home console market share about as well as a sieve holds thick custard. It wasn't doom and gloom at Nintendo HQ, far from it actually, but with each passing generation a small chunk of the once dominant console division vanished. If this continues you could easily conclude that Nintendo had found their niche, mainstream gamers would get their fix elsewhere while Nintendo catered only to the fans of their first party titles.

However we can't take such grandiose statements at sheer face value, to find out the true fairness therein we need to dig deeper, look at the industry, Nintendo and how their public game plan was at the time. Little was known about the future Nintendo console at the start of May but we did know a few details thanks to the Game Developers Conference. Nintendo were planning a "revolution" in gaming, they were planing a "paradigm shift" in control functionality and they were planning to target "non-gamers". These three simple comments (even if some are just amusing cultural translations!) really tell the true story, in fact they're about as subtle as smack in the jaw. When Iwata-san talked of expanding the market he was not planning to target only Nintendo fans, indeed the very game plan of the Revolution was to not be a niche player!