Nintendo to enter Edutainment

[ShadiWulf]

After capturing an expanded audience of senior citizens and adults that love Wii Sports you have to wonder who Nintendo plans on targeting next. A patent filed today in the USA shows one scenario. This patent is for a system of games designed for young children, defined by Nintendo as toddlers and pre-kindergartners, and/or people with disabilities.

Nintendo plans on capturing this market with a series of easy to control edutainment software that emphasizes skills like number recognition, color identification, reading/writing, and sound recognition.

Let’s take a look at some of the example games Nintendo has in the application. These are by no means final. They are concepts Nintendo may modify, expand on or never use.

An animal matching game which teaches children about animals and how to interact with them. Players click on the shadows and try to discern which sound which animal makes.

A number matching game designed to teach kids to count. Mario actually speaks in this game with sound bytes to announce the numbers.

A letter matching game designed to teach children the basics of spelling. In this example the apple, ant, and alligator all start with “A” so the player should pick A. A variation of this game might have players pick a letter for the object that does not belong in a group.

A memory or concentration game. The example has Pikachu cards that say his catch phrase “Pika Pika” connecting the TV show with the game. Match two Pikachus and you win. In you match Pikachu with a non-Pikachu tile he gets shocked!

A maze game that could have puzzles as roadblocks leading to the exit.

A matching game designed to teach children the shape of objects. The sailboat has a triangular mast so it links with the triangle. The dump truck has circular wheels and the jack-in-the-box is made of square faces.

Nintendo also wants to use their system to educate children about daily tasks. The player character, in this case Mario, is on his day off from saving the Mushroom Kingdom in his house doing ordinary tasks.

This game acts as a life simulation of sorts where a player helps Mario as he’s waking up to make his bed. Motion control will be used to emulate grabbing the sheet and smoothing wrinkles with a slow horizontal motion. Nintendo emphasizes they want to use familiar characters and specifically mention familiar Nintendo characters, television and/or licensed cartoon characters like Pikachu, Dora the Explorer, and Bob the Builder as examples.

A personal care mini-game where you learn about hygiene and help Mario brush his teeth. This mini-game sounds rather elaborate since Nintendo wants to record the inclination angle of the remote and the speed to determine which teeth you’re brushing and how effective you are.

A family interaction game where players walk into a library and “meet” their parent to read a book. In theory, parents will play this game with their kids and read the “book” when text appears on the screen.

In this animal care game you interact with a virtual pet by feeding it with the right food, petting it, bathing it, checking for ticks, etc.

A gardening game with horticultural lessons. Look out Gardening Mama!

A game centered around a family outing like going to a zoo to learn about animals. Another outing takes players to an amusement park to learn about safety gravity. A camping game teaches wilderness survival skills with mini-games like making a fire.

Nintendo believes these games or learning tools will help young children develop skills. Forget the “Nintendo abandoned core gamers” mantra for a second and think if this plan will work. A long time ago Sega tried to grab the young children demographic with the Pico which had a drawing board. That didn’t work so well, but Nintendo has an elaborate edutainment plan with multiple concept games. Can they capture another audience for the Wii with this strategy?

http://www.siliconera.com/2009/03/20/ninte...ds-edutainment/

Pictures at the URL

GO NINTENDO!!!!!!

[Sean]

So what's wrong with this?

Other than being even more fuel for the never-ending "hardcore vs. casual" flamewar.

[ShadiWulf]

SEGA and other publishers are working hard at trying to break the Kiddy stereotype on the Wii and here goes Nintendo ruining all their progress, I hope they ditch Nintendo when their games don't sell.

HotD Overkill only sold 45,000 copies in Feb

[TheGerkuman]

Yeah, let's put our own interest instead of the generation that folows us, and inherits our markets.

More seriously though, most Edutainment sucks, so if Nintendo can actually make good ones, then all power to them.

[Remy]

Nintendo also wants to use their system to educate children about daily tasks. The player character, in this case Mario, is on his day off from saving the Mushroom Kingdom in his house doing ordinary tasks.

This game acts as a life simulation of sorts where a player helps Mario as he’s waking up to make his bed. Motion control will be used to emulate grabbing the sheet and smoothing wrinkles with a slow horizontal motion. Nintendo emphasizes they want to use familiar characters and specifically mention familiar Nintendo characters, television and/or licensed cartoon characters like Pikachu, Dora the Explorer, and Bob the Builder as examples.

wow we need videogames and Mario to teach kids how to make their bed?

Oh society. Kids these days! Parents these days!

[Conando]

I could really care less, all this talking about such things just proves to aggravate the already stupid situation of all the whining. Honestly, I'm not quite sure if I've ever seen a whinier bunch than Nintendo fans, other than Sonic fans that is. Seriously, what the hell is this? It's like we're a bunch of old fogeys who are afraid of anything other than what we had on the NES and SNES. Nintendo is fine, they haven't gone down any dark paths yet, I think we leave it at that. As long as they still produce the titles we loved as kids, what's the big deal?

Edited March 21, 2009 by Hero Of Fate

[ShadiWulf]

I honestly don't care what happens to the Wii, but having games like MADWORLD is awesome, but if it's a one time thing... well then, so be it

I'm not a Nintendo fan either =P I just hate their new direction for the company, ripping people off.

[Conando]

Maybe I should just expand it to gamers in general then, because I seriously believe whatever is going on...it's getting worse. It's like you can't go by one day without something like this, and not just for Nintendo. There's the old fall back to PS3 of having no games, and the 360 having the RROD. We get it, and it's getting old.

[ShadiWulf]

It would of been the exact same way in the 90's if the internet was more popular then if not worse.

[Conando]

Then how come I don't remember it being nearly as bad during the last gen? I have to wonder if we're all getting less mature as we get older.

Edited March 21, 2009 by Hero Of Fate

[ShadiWulf]

Well... Dreamcast sure got picked on a lot last gen.

XBOX got called the big fat american console that is only good for FPS

PS2 was in the middle, didn't get picked on because most liked it, only diehard Nintendo fans picked on it.

Gamecube got picked on for being purple and kiddy

seems the same as ever

[DaBatGuy]

It official, the Wii is the most expensive Leap frog console on the market now. I don't think Ninty has even hinted at a new game from their popular franchises since Brawl. Also, way to rip-off a pose Mario.

[ShadiWulf]

This is my predictions for GDC and after GDC

Iwata: Story does not matter, graphics do not matter, gameplay does not matter.... it's the context that matters

Nintendo fanboys: ITS NOT ABOUT GAMEPLAY AND GRAPHICS!!! ITS THE CONTEXT!!! OMG!!111one!!

[Mollfie]

Good for them, hopefully they'll make good edutainment games. I remember having a few when I was a kid cos my mum would buy me though but not proper games, I actually enjoyed most of them.

[Conando]

Well... Dreamcast sure got picked on a lot last gen.

XBOX got called the big fat american console that is only good for FPS

PS2 was in the middle, didn't get picked on because most liked it, only diehard Nintendo fans picked on it.

Gamecube got picked on for being purple and kiddy

seems the same as ever

Maybe it's just that everyone is louder these days, which is probably true...Or maybe I just blocked it out because I've been getting tired of it for a long time. I don't really understand why people can't just play the damn games. As for flagship titles, we've pretty much known a new Zelda has been in development for years now, but Nintendo learned their lesson from the over-hyping that Brawl got and apparently now don't want to tell us anything until the games are close to release. Which, frankly, is ass. Way for a few to ruin it for the majority.

Also: Pikmin 3, but that's not really a flagship title. Still, I care about it considering Pikmin is the newest IP to come from Nintendo(core IP, rather), and the first 2 were damn fun.

Edited March 21, 2009 by Hero Of Fate

[ShadiWulf]

Microsoft is just as bad as anyone else XD

"You can't underestimate that we're half the price of the PS3 at a time when consumers [were] looking for great value... The PS3 was down in February two percent even with the launch of Killzone 2 -- that's months of year-over-year declines. Xbox continues to head north while the PS3 is heading south. We're gaining share."

"But what we hear from our partners is that it's not just PS3, it's also PS2 down 62 percent year over year. With that business declining, and with the PS3 business declining, it's been described to me as hemorrhaging at retail right now, and it just keeps getting worse."

"What we're finding in our research is that a large portion of the volume we're driving with Xbox 360 purchasers is actually PS2 owners choosing Xbox for the next generation. We're switching people from the PlayStation brand over to the Xbox brand."

lol and don't forget about all the Nintendo fanboys that made fun of UMD's flying out of PSP's.

[Conando]

Well, the whole flying UMD thing apparently was a small hardware issue in early PSP models, but it sure as hell wasn't as easy as people made it out to be. I'm pretty sure the PSP had to be shaken, or banged. The real thing I remember about UMD is how everyone was laughing at how stupid a media type it seemed to be, the same with blu ray in this gen. I think it was almost SHOCKING that a Sony media format finally stuck. As for Microsoft...I would have expected them to be arrogant, it's what happens when companies rise up to the top for the first time. Happened with SEGA in NA, and Nintendo in the rest of the world. Look what happened with that, they were completely humbled. Looks like Sony's up for that now, and maybe Microsoft will be next...

[ShadiWulf]

Well, the whole flying UMD thing apparently was a small hardware issue in early PSP models, but it sure as hell wasn't as easy as people made it out to be. I'm pretty sure the PSP had to be shaken, or banged. The real thing I remember about UMD is how everyone was laughing at how stupid a media type it seemed to be, the same with blu ray in this gen. I think it was almost SHOCKING that a Sony media format finally stuck. As for Microsoft...I would have expected them to be arrogant, it's what happens when companies rise up to the top for the first time. Happened with SEGA in NA, and Nintendo in the rest of the world. Look what happened with that, they were completely humbled. Looks like Sony's up for that now, and maybe Microsoft will be next...

Microsoft is too good at business for that to happen, just look at their OS marketshare They are experts at having monopolies but not getting in trouble for them.

[Conando]

I wouldn't put it out of the question considering they're still fairly new to the game hardware business. I mean, they playing the cards right for now, but I doubt gamers would be there to support them if it weren't for the larger amount of titles available. There's always the possibility that they could make one choice that doesn't sit well with developers, and then it all goes down the toilet(See N64 carts and PS3's apparent development difficulties). Of course, though, they're good at building a fairly developer friendly console, so that's probably unlikely.

[ShadiWulf]

Well right now they are buying all their exclusives/games... and it seems to be working for them ^__^ Lol, you know they totally payed SquareEnix to get FFXIII on 360.

[Roareye Black]

Edutainment has never been made correctly. If nintendo can do it then good on them. They're certainly failing to deliver the core titles that people remember them for so they may as well succeed at something. I know D'Harhan or someone else is gonna epxlode in here to argue me down but really what's the point? Nintendo said the Wii would cater to hardcore from the off and then all we got was Metroid Prime 3 and a GC port (And even MP3 was late!). Then they said that 2008 would be a year of lots of hardcore titles or at least announcements, we had Mario Kart Wii (Which is on the fringe of the term as it is) and Brawl then stopped in March. MARCH. No more announced titles, no more releases. They then said they'd give the hardcore something cool at E3 and they bloody failed again.

It's obvious to see where the company's focus is, and I'm not going to yell about it anymore. That's cool, Nintendo have hit a much more profitable market which fits their new company ethos better than the previous one. That's a good thing for them, and only a moron would tell a business to turn away from a profitable userbase. But the fact is I've pure given up on Nintendo, if I took away my Wii and put my GC (Which is in the loft) back in my room what would I lose? A bit of Brawl (Tho Melee was more fun) and the uglinoor of the white handbag design. That's it. Other than a few rare titles there's not much on Wii worth shouting for. The reason isn't because "Wii is kiddy and crap", not at all. The reason is that on PS3 and 360 you at least have alot of games that are great fun but aren't anything special. There's a base of cheap, unaccomplished but downright fun titles to play. Nintendo have none on their machine, just sterling works and edushitte. And while that's similar to my favourite N64 era, the fact is that this time there's more shitte than sterling works. Even the Nintendo Seal of Quality is a joke now.

Edutainment isn't new. I have bloody Maths Drill on my old Commodore Amiga 500+, but that was shit too. Only thing that made Maths Drill great was the voice it had. It was like Microsoft Sam's retarded brother saying in very bad and clipped tongue "You make me HAPpy", with the strange emphasis on HAP. I'm guessing the Wii won't have the genius of hilarious voices. So the one positive about edutainment is now gone

Roareye Black.

[Patticus]

I'm not going to explode, we've had this same argument a dozen times now and we both know where we stand.

I know D'Harhan or someone else is gonna epxlode in here to argue me down but really what's the point? Nintendo said the Wii would cater to hardcore from the off and then all we got was Metroid Prime 3 and a GC port (And even MP3 was late!).

Many may not be Nintendo's own titles (their domination of their own format really irked many publishers last gen), but on the Wii there are a lot of actually good games. If you haven't found any, either you're purposefully blinding yourself to their existence or you can't be bothered to find the diamonds in the rough. And there's a lot of rough, I will admit, but that kinda comes with the territory of being in the top spot (sadly it's a lot more obvious here than on PS1/PS2).

But yeah, there are good games.

Even the Nintendo Seal of Quality is a joke now.

This is true, and Nintendo knows it; the seal is now obscurely positioned on the back of boxes instead of being in its old prominent position on the front.

[Flint]

Maybe it's just that everyone is louder these days, which is probably true...

It's the whole "it's COOL and RADICAL to be a snarky bastard always moaning" fad. One of the bigger brainfarts of the current gaming community alongside the ever-so-stupid EVIL COMMIE CASUALS vs TRU HARDCORE MANLY MEN WITH CHICKS AND BEER FUCK YEAH standoffs.

Edited March 21, 2009 by Flint

[Gabz Girl]

Eurgh, if these edutainment titles are really going to be released soon...

Please let them NOT be revealed at the E3 conference! Noooo, I beg you! D:

[Sega DogTagz]

Please let them NOT be revealed at the E3 conference! Noooo, I beg you! D:

Hahaha

Man, that would not go over well with the gaming community. And yet I have a sneaking suspicion that at E3 it is still exactly what is going to happen.

Anyone up for a friendly wager?