Going For The Jugular With A Feminine Touch

They must be shitting themselves inside the Xbox and Playstation marketing teams, and rightly so. Nintendo is my favourite company in the world right now, and this report from The Guardian which says that Face Training is on the way, makes me clench my fist for them just a little bit harder

Having spent four or five years of my life at the sharp end of their PR machine in Europe when things were shit, (I ran the UK & Europe account at Cake between '99 and about '04 desperately trying to hack GameCubes and Game Boy Advance) it's utterly refreshing to see the company deliver the ethos it always promised, with Wii and DS consoles.

This is a company that is nothing but odd. Now I'm told, Japan's second richest company based on cash in the bank, Nintendo has always been clear. It is an entertainment company. Has been for 100 years. Video games were just the next extension of that in the 1970s. They make money and sell things based on a simple premise: will this game be fun?

Having sat on the receiving end of 3rd party games developers getting wet about how the grass moved on a football pitch, or the flickering of an eyebrow on a Uzi-armed terrorist, it is rather gratifying to see how an entire industry is now paying for metaphorically and physically taking its eye off the ball. The disparaging 'kids stuff' put-downs in the direction of Mario and his mates have dried up.

What would send chills through my veins the most is the manner in which Nintendo, with Christmas is approaching, is going for the jugular - aggressively targeting anyone but spotty boys in bedrooms. The latest spot is the one of the most direct forms of TV advertising I've seen for a while....slow, orderly gameplay followed by a strapline which might as well say, 'these are games for girls.'

Nice work lads.