DS focused on "Casual Gamers"

Satoru Iwata recently posted on Shigesato Itoi' s website that the DS would be pushed towards casual gamers, and generally increasing the population of gamers.

The genre of "casual games" is a fairly new one, but in essence, it's games you can pick up and play quickly, give a good amount of satisfaction in a short amount of time, and appeal to a broad demographic. Probably one of the most successful "casual games" of all time is Tetris, followed closely by Bejeweled.

I think the problem here is that it seems Nintendo is backpedaling away from the original intent of the DS, which if I remember correctly was to provide a new type of gaming experience. They've probably seen the types of games being developed for the device, and realize that it's hitting a bit of a different market.

And therein lies the catch ... the reason casual games work is that you can play them anywhere, and usually at low or no cost. The Tetris phenomenon aside, sites like Microsoft's Zone, PopCap, etc. work because the gamer can play anywhere they have web access, get a quick fix, and be done with it. For a more involved game experience, they can buy the deluxe versions, but it's the "play before you play" aspect that works so well.

The DS costs $149, which while being inexpensive for a portable game device, is extremely expensive compared to what people are expecting for casual games. Casual games are proliferating on cell phones because you're already carrying it with you, the DS needs to convince people that it's worth bringing around, and its size doesn't help much.

All in all, I think that this renewed focus might be a mistake. The touchscreen gives new gameplay options, but even the Pocket PC and Palm devices which have had them for years, haven't seen a great deal of innovation on that front. The DS has potential, but I don't think that the casual gamer market is where it's going to be found.