Nintendo Hires Walking Gamers

Plug1 writes "CNN.com has an interesting article about nintendo hiring people to offer free samples of their games. Stephen Pellitier "will wear a 15-inch flat-screen TV on his chest and a pack of batteries on his back. With a game console and joysticks dangling from his waist, he will spend his weekends inviting passers-by to play games."" imagine the possible pickup lines involving joysticks, buttons, and playing with them! The potential for being beaten on the streets is just amazing!

Comments

Drug dealers do this !!!

[Kasmiur]

They get kids to sell to other kids. Now apperently Nintendo are taking this route. Whats next offering the first game free?

Did I just read that?

[jcsehak]

The potential for being beaten on the streets is just amazing!

must... get... mind... out... of... gutter...

The Amazing Walking Bilboard

[Calimus]

We all knew this was going to happen at some point. We are already a walking advertisements (nike hats, shoes, shirts, etc..) it's really about time in this day and age that human advertising machine became interactive.

Think about the future this could bring, We advance from having a flat screen on the front and batteries on the back to an imbeded LCD/plasma screen in the chest and runs right off the electricity created by the brain. The games/advertisements are stored in the brain as well and just played back from memory.

Who needs walls and signs when the human body could do it more efficiently.

Of course, when this happens for real, I think it will be time to check myself out of the gene pool.

Re:The Amazing Walking Bilboard

[SirSlud]

The more this proliferates, the more people there will be like my friend, who's taken to removing logos from everything he wears - even gifts, etc.

Remember the ying and yang - as this kind of thing becomes more popular, the counter-advertising culture will have to take _their_ campaign to a whole new level. This is what I'm most interested in seeing.

Pick-Up Lines

[akiy]

5. I'll make all your Final Fantasies come true.
4. You sure set off my Chrono Trigger.
3. Want to see what I can draw in Mario Paint?
2. I'll be Link, and you can be my Zelda. ... and ...

1. Want to play with my Mario?

Re:obligatory comment

[stoolpigeon]

booth-babes has been sitting all bored after E3

Yeah- hot women have absolutely nothing to do unless there's some kind of geek convention going on.

National Exposure

[pudge_lightyear]

After the great dot.com bust and 9/11, advertising has gotten pretty tricky. I imagine that budgets are tight, media options are somewhat slimmer, etc.
The neatest thing about this campaign is that sure...this may not work, but it made national news because it's a new idea.
So...they spend a couple of hundred bucks to pay a few guys to walk around crowded areas on weekends. Pay a couple thousand on hardware...probably about 500 for each. And reap the (probably small benefits) associated with this campaign. But...the national exposure this should generate because of the fact that it's new and wierd would probably have costed hundreds to thousands of times what they spent on the few kids and units.

Re:National Exposure

[cancrman]

> I imagine that budgets are tight, media options are somewhat slimmer...

If anything there are more choices for advertising media than ever. Been to a bar lately? Advertisments over urinals (I have seen GTA3 ads on these), postcards by the doors, coasters, swizzlesticks, matchbooks. It's all fair game these days. My company used cars wrapped in ads to get their message out. There is a company were you can lease models to hand out product samples.

TV, radio, internet (banners, spam, popups), print (magazines, newspapers) outdoor, sponsorships, 'guerilla media' (Bars, wild postings, samplings, elevator LCDs, floor graphics), LCDs in checkout lines. Christ, even the divders in the supermarket checkout lines have ads on them.

Advertising is becoming so commonplace and persistant that companies need something to differentiate themselves. Hence this new campaign by nintendo.

It's fucking brilliant.

I'm a media planner and I wish I had the opportunity to come up with this idea.

Nintendo's Street Team

[Radnor]

The Street Team's website can be found here. They have people in LA, Boston, Seattle, Chicago, Atlanta, and Dallas.

Re:Beaten up?

[morgajel]

you may be tough, but you still look like a frickin teletubbie.

Re:Nice target

[teamhasnoi]

How long until someone beats up the kid, takes the game, throws it through the window of the store, sets the store and a marching band on fire, carjacks a car, runs drugs for a mob kingpin, researches the Republic to get Conscription, raises an army and invades Nebraska and the Temple of Nod? I'd say 15 min.

Re:there goes the 'kiddy system' argument

[Yorrike]

This is the exact reason why I would have called members of the team "Walking Adverts for Nintendo Games", as opposed to "Nintendo Human Interactive Units", for you see, my naming idea acronyms nicely ; )

Duck Hunt?

[nullard]

I know it's for the original NES, but just immagine playing Duck Hunt like this. Passersby might freak out.