Nintendo Wary of Flooding the DS

Lots of games means we're left looking at spines.

Nintendo sold more than 40 million DSs around the world by the end of March, the company announced last week. Those impressive numbers are prompting game makers to give the portable more attention, but Nintendo says it is aware of the risks that come with that focus.

During a Q&A session following the anouncement of his company's latest financial results, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata acknowledged that more publishers were boarding the DS. And more games jostling for the same shelf space brings new challenges.

Iwata said the influx of new games was forcing stores to pack most DS games with just their spines facing customers rather than placing them face-forward - effectively eliminating cover art as an attention grabber.

"Even when we have titles that have unique and interesting elements, if we cannot conduct effective marketing, they can end up being unnoticed by potential customers," he said.

It's not just shelf space that's a problem. With more DS games coming out, there are inevitably going to be more bad games, and that could hurt the perception of the quality of games on the system.

"So, the increase in software titles per se is good, but we cannot be content with the situation," Iwata said. "We have to recognize that our customers have a limited amount of attention, we have to struggle to find out a way to communicate what they really want to know and we have to be considerate so that we will not betray our customers' expectations."

Cutting down on the number of games released for the DS is one potential solution, but the numbers suggest Nintendo isn't taking that path. The company recently said that it is developing nearly 80 games for the portable.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo