End or Triumph of Nintendo in the Hands of Addiction

            Nintendo has been one of the king game companies since 1889, but it seems that an age of Doodle Jump and Temple Run is bringing the age of console videogames to a close. To start off, for the people who don’t know, a console videogame is a videogame that is run on a system such as the Wii or Xbox 360 that needs to be connected to a television set to function. Hopefully, most people know what smart phone games are. An article in the New York Times entitled “Nintendo Confronts a Changed Video Game World” by Nick Wingfield talks about the decline of Nintendo because many people play more smart phone games. Some of the reasons for this include that smart phone games are cheaper and portable, but another factor that must be considered is the role of gamers’ addiction. Mitch Lasky, who was once an industry executive “says he walked into his living room, which is brimming withal the major consoles, a library of new titles and a 60- inch plasma TV, only to find his children crowding around an iPhone playing Temple Run.”(5) Even Doodle Jump jokingly states in the App store, “BE WARNED: insanely addictive!” The portability of these games extends the venues in which you can game, which makes these games extremely desirable for those who are hooked, and need to be locked on to a screen 24/7.

            These same addicts, however, are the gamers that Nintendo needs to kick start it’s new era. The latest console sold by Nintendo is the Wii U. “GameStop, the video game retailer, opened 3,000 stores at midnight on Thursday for Black Friday”(Wingfield 5) selling Wii U’s. This console needs great reception if Nintendo is to make it through this dark tunnel, and gamers are their target audience. Basically, gamers could make or break the Nintendo Empire.