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Categories: Blog, Brand Study

continued from Part 1…

Get N, Or Get Out! (cont’d)

In 1995, on the eve of Sony‘s launch of the PlayStation, Nintendo had complete domination the home console market.  Kids no longer went to the arcade after school.  Instead, they would race home on their skateboards and reload their saved game of Zelda on their SNES.  And if they couldn’t make it home, they would reach into their back pocket, pull out their GameBoy and play a couple rounds of Tetris.  The Nintendo brand did not stop at hardware.  Mario, Luigi, Link, Donkey Kong and the rest of the Nintendo characters because marketing icons themselves and Nintendo branched into TV cartoons, and merchandising.  Oh life was good.  So good in fact that were not aware of a change in the gaming landscape.

The previous paradigm of identical clones of arcade games was no longer relevant, because arcade games were becoming obsolete.  And the hard-line policies previously used to ensure game quality and child-friendliness became a growth inhibitor because game programmers we limited in the number of titles they could release.  Sony went after Nintendo by lifting restrictions on game programmers and gave their source code to anyone that had two hands and a keyboard.  You made the same title as someone else?  No problem we’ll call it something else.  Too much blood and gore?  Hmm, we don’t care.  Oh your game is boring and totally no fun?  Whatever… that’s your problem.  So on that dreaded day for Nintendo, Sony dropped their new 32-bit gaming console “Playstation” in stres worldwide accompanied with a massive catalog of titles.  Most of those titles were mediocre or crap, but there were enough gems like Ridge Racer and Warhawk.  The Playstation people believed, “Nintendo may have their Mario and Zelda, but we have everything else”.  And soon, PlayStation took a monster bite out of Nintendo’s marketshare.

Nintendo adopted the slogan “Who Needs a New System?” in an attempt to stall PS1 sales until their N64 was released.  Then the brand message was quickly flipped to “Change the System” when they released the N64 the next fall in 1996.  Once again, Nintendo was late to the dance, but this time it would cost them.  Let’s give credit where credit is due, the N64 flew off the shelves like hotcakes.  Nintendo was a comfortable fit, and Super Mario 64‘s stunning 3D game play wooed the die-hard “Nintendroids”.  But those same Nintendo users were also Playstation owners too and as time passed, game creators like EA and Konami were profiting by making titles for both systems.  And even though, the Nintendo games were mostly great titles, the restriction-free Sony was releasing 5 times more titles and many of them were just as good.  Not to mention those kids that fell in love with the Mario 10 years ago had grown up into teenagers, and PlayStation had no problems allowing blood, and violence into their gaming genres.  It became obvious that Sony was dominating the marketplace and it was taking it’s toll on Nintendo.    The more passive “Change the System” was soon replaced with a more aggressive marketing campaign, “Get N, or Get Out!”.  But it was much too late, gamers were turning on their PS and letting their N64 collect dust.

Touching is Good!

Nintendo was on the road to the way of the DoDo bird; the great Sony had shot an arrow into Nintendo’s Achilles Heel, and the wound seemed fatal.  The only really unique product they had left was their handheld market, but clearly this could not keep Nintendo’s life line going.

Did I just say clearly?

In 1996, the same year the N64 launched, a new title was released for the Gameboy featuring a little yellow creature named Pikachu.  Unknown at the time, this battle game called Pokemon because the beating pulse of Nintendo during the console battle with Sony.  Between 1996 and 2005, Nintendo diverted more and more of their resources toward the hand-held gaming market; a market they still dominated.  The original 1994 GameBoy slogan of “Play It Loud” was replaced with the “Get Into It!” with the GameBoy Color and again, in 2001, replaced with “Life. Advanced” for the GBA (Game Boy Advanced).  Like a dog and it’s bone, Nintendo could ill-afford to have Sony’s new secret weapon (PSP) to come and repeat history, so they decided to act instead of react. So one year before that PSP hit the shelves, in 2004, Nintendo gave the world the Nintendo DS.  Their marketing campaign was centered around the word “Touch” to highlight the new stylus/touchpad technology, on the dual screens. (get it?… Dual Screen?… DS?…)  In previous marketing strategies, Nintendo always used comparisons to show they were better then their competitors, but for the first time, Nintendo just needed to focus on their customer and simply tell them that the DS is a “good thing”.  The “First to Market” approach paid off, and the DS (and soon to be released DS Lite), along with some innovative games, would not relinquish their share of the handheld market.

But as the old saying goes, “If a business isn’t growing, then the business is dying”.  And Nintendo was not growing at all.  They had survived another day, but this wasn’t going to be good enough.  So they took their brand, twisted it sideways, and in 2005, Nintendo took a bold step forward.

[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

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Tags: brand, Donkey Kong, Game Boy, Games, history, identity, logo, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Entertainment System, Playstation, PlayStation Portable, slogan, Sony, Super Mario 64, Super Mario Bros, Video game, Video game console, video games