Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot was recently quoted during the company's annual earnings conference, saying he believes the Nintendo NX would bring back casual gamers.
Specifically, what's being referred to is the type of gamers that are not hardcore fans of gaming rigs and are, in comparison, not continually upgrading their hardware to support new and demanding games.
Casual gamers can also be better defined through the type of games they play, such as Just Dance and Mario Kart, which are titles that are relatively short in terms of required gaming time, perfectly suited for cooperative or family play and are more arcade-like in a sense, i.e. levels and objectives are obvious and require little to no gaming knowledge beforehand.
The previous Nintendo Wii was adapted to this sort of gameplay and reportedly sold more than 100 million units worldwide mainly because of its appeal to a previously untapped market consisting of casual gamers.
Other companies such as Sony and Microsoft — PlayStation and Xbox, respectively — usually cater to a specific set of audiences that is already invested in the industry. On the other hand, Nintendo and its Wii stood out, in that it appealed to both hardcore and casual gamers and hence, an unprecedented success in gaming history.
"The Wii was a breath of fresh air within a market that was inundated with consistently stale and predictable offerings from Sony and Microsoft," writes one of our previous reports.
A repeat performance, however, brought in by the Nintendo Wii U did not achieve the same success as its predecessor did. Casual gamers, after all, are not hardcore gamers that need to continuously upgrade their hardware, as mentioned, and the Wii U neither offered any appeal nor incentive that would push its casual gaming market to upgrade.
Nintendo's presumably learned from these experiences and has been working on a new model, dubbed the Nintendo NX, which carries a "brand-new concept." Based on the amount of support from developers and Ubisoft's own CEO, Nintendo NX might just bring back all those casual gamers that have stayed with Nintendo Wii throughout the years.
"We think having a [Nintendo NX] coming is going to help the industry to continue to grow and to take a lot more casual players back to the industry," comments Guillemot, adding that what they've seen of the console has been "really great."
While there's been no confirmed reports or supported claims from the company regarding its actual specs or differences from predecessors, Nintendo did confirm that the NX is launching in March next year. In addition, it remains to be seen if the NX will perform as expected in the industry but from all the hype it's been receiving lately, we sure are definitely excited about it.
Are you guys, too? Tell us in the comments below.
