Nintendo Unveils Casual Gamer Brand

The Guardian Gamesblog discusses the newly announced Touch Generation of games for Nintendo's consoles. From the article: "This is, of course, a pointless piece of product re-positioning, symptomatic of modern business's obsession with branding above and beyond the call of sense. More importantly though, it's about Nintendo reveling in its E3 success. It is about a company that has effectively spent the last decade in its own self-made ghetto, turning to the industry and saying, 'I told you so' ... The wider world is coming back to videogames - and Nintendo is speaking its language. Anyway, the first three new releases in the Touch Generations line-up will be Big Brain Academy, the second title in the brain-training series, Magnetica, a marble-based puzzler, and Sudoku Gridmaster, a Sodoku game with over 400 puzzles. They're out this summer."

Comments

Re:Puzzle Games

[kannibal_klown]

you can just shut the DS. The DS will automatically pause when its closed and go into a always on sleep mode.

I know (I play some DS games quite often lately), but I'm not talking about the complexity to pause/unpause or turn on/off. Merely the act of doing it in a frenzied "puzzle" level (which can be even more tense than an arcade game).

If you made it to a high level of Lumines (DS) or Tetris (PSP), by the time you close the lid a shape may have come close to landing in its default position. The same with opening and/or unpausing. You'd be tempted to say "can you wait 5 seconds so I can clear these lines" though you probably wouldn't if it was something important like work. And in the end you be just as hesitant to stop and likely to "lose" as if you were playing against some hard boss in an arcade game.

Re:Confusing and counter-productive

[DrEldarion]

I'd say just the opposite. With a properly-marketed brand, non-gamers know what they're looking for rather than just wandering into the game section and being overwhelmed. Can you imagine a typical grandma trying to browse the game aisle at Best Buy? Now, what if she knew she had to head to the "Touch Generations" section?

Website

[snib]

Official Touch Generations website here. It contains a full list of games included under the Touch Generation name.

Re:"Over 400 puzzles"?

[Kusunose]

All 400 Sudoku puzzles in Sudoku Gridmaster are not computer-generated but created and rated by Nikoli, godfather of Sudoku.