Nintendo is a company that has seen its profits rise to new heights in recent years, following the release of its two massively successful products, the DS handheld and the Wii console, both of which have become definite must-haves for a variety of people, not only for hardcore gamers. This new market, dubbed the casual one, became very important to the Japanese company, which focused a lot of its titles towards it.

Although this strategy brought a lot of negative feedback from the hardcore gamers, who felt like they had been betrayed, it brought Nintendo an even bigger profit and assured that the Wii or the DS would become quite hard to find on the store shelves, even though they had been launched for quite some time. 

Now it seems that Nintendo of America president, Reggie Fils-Aime, wants to set the record straight with core gamers, as the company names them, and comes to tackle the subject of marketing as regards different types of market segments, which have various degrees of game information aimed at them. Talking with GameDaily, Fils-Aime says that his company has employed marketing for titles aimed at a broader audience, as hardcore gamers can easily find information on upcoming games on specialty websites.

“Marketing is shaped by what's appropriate for a particular game. While it might seem to some that games that appeal to the expanded audience get more attention, that's probably because the expanded audience has a steeper learning curve. Core gamers and their friends are tuned into the gaming news and blog sites, so they already know a lot of what's going on. This new audience is just getting started, so our initial outreach might be more focused on education – in fun and unique ways – then we can begin to communicate the availability of titles they might find appealing.”

He then goes on to exemplify with the mainstream marketing for Super Smash Brothers Brawl, both via old-media ads or billboards and through different underground websites that brought weekly or even daily information about it.

Let's just hope that the Japanese company will continue to deliver the great games it has gotten us accustomed to and that it will not neglect its core market in the future.