Nintendo Thinking About Using Downloadable Demos for 3DS & Wii U

Nintendo’s been monitoring consumer behaviors on their recent consoles very closely it seems. At a recent investors’ meeting, President Iwata talked about how while Nintendo’s flagship franchises are very well-known and most people will recognize them and want to try them out, lesser-known or new games often get overlooked. Nintendo’s hoping to fix that by offering downloadable demos for prospective players to try out so they can learn about new titles and possibly build impressions based on real hands-on game time.

When Nintendo would like to ask users to try a specific new game, we should deliver it to their Nintendo 3DS, and possibly Wii U, with their prior consent and recommend that they just try it and, if they like it, they can pay for it. In this way, we need to introduce users to unknown products.

Consumers are likely to be convinced to pay about 5,000 yen for a well-established franchise product, but not all the people are willing to pay a certain amount of money for an innovative but unknown product. Now is the time to prepare for these situations.

One has to wonder why they didn’t take this approach sooner with the original Wii. As a platform that’s supposed to be always connected, it would have been a perfect opportunity to expand exposure to gaming. Of course, Iwata’s talking about showing people all-new gaming experiences outside of established franchises, but maybe Mario and Zelda will get demo versions too? Goodness knows I’d love to be able to try out the Skyward Sword demo without the pressures of waiting in line at E3.

Of course, this is all hypothetical right now, but we’ll see if this idea comes to bear fruit in the near future. I’d expect to hear something more closer to the launch of Wii U.

Source: Tiny Cartridge via GoNintendo