One of Nintendo’s salient features as a company is that it is the only major gaming publisher and developer still pushing out high budget software targeted at the family and kids market. No other company targets that segment of the market as persistently and consistently as Nintendo does, preferring instead to chase the 20-30 year old male.
And while Nintendo games can be enjoyed by everyone, including adults, the key thing here is that they can also specifically be enjoyed by kids, who may not be able to come to grips with games by other companies. And this is a fact that Nintendo takes great pride in, and sees as being fundamental to its long term strategy for market survival.
“We are happy that [our competition] don’t [pay attention to the kids and family market],” Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime said in an interview with Toronto Star. “It’s been an incredibly important market because the kid who’s 5 or 6 today is going to be 12 or 13 and not all that many years later 18 or 19 … And when you have an affinity for Pokémon or The Legend of Zelda series or Mario Kart or Super Mario Bros. that affinity carries with you.”
Ultimately, I think Nintendo themselves have identified the power of nostalgia, and how it can be leveraged over the long term- there’s a reason that so many have a fond spot for franchises like Zelda or Pokemon, and that’s because, even when they have grown up, those people associate those games with their childhood days, and always want to play them to relive those childhood days.
For Nintendo, it is good that they make so many games targeted at the family market- they don’t have any meaningful competition there, and this focus helps them persistently survive and create a new generation of Nintendo fans, every generation.