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Afterward: Your Thoughts

06:00 - Monday 25 April 2005 by Christiaan Allebest

This isn't my first column on Nintendo , and you can bet it won't be my last. Judging from the amount of feedback to my last piece, many of you feel passionately about the situation. Besides the angry emails about mis-identifying Hikaru Utada, nearly everyone who wrote me felt similarly.

One reader's feelings are reprinted here:

Basically, I grew up with video games. I am almost thirty, (born in '75) and I am a member of the first generation to become video gamers so to speak from the beginning of concsious life (I was playing Pong in '79). With that in mind, I have noticed a trend that is enexorable. You see many financial wizzes wondering how far gaming can go as a market. But the answer is simple. My generation leads the way in age. Each subsequent generation that follows is into gaming, that simple.

Generations ahead of mine in age do not play videogames much, with a few exceptions. But my generation and the ones following play a lot (and buy a lot of the offerings). So, the way it works out is that as my generation gets older more gamers appear because more non-gamers are dying off and being replaced by gamers. Its cold but its true. We will see how big video gaming (and its marketplace) is when I am 65 years old or so, or whenever lifespans indicate seniority by then (I'm thinking 180 or so...please!). Even now, 25 years after Pong, we have not even scratched the surface in either the audience and marketplace for this technology or the capacity of the technology itself.

That's why the more successful players in the vid-game biz have a full offering, even an adult offering. They recognize that video gamers are now an adult market. You don't hit the age of fifteen and ditch the habit. If Nintendo doesn't see that, its because they are run by old men who do not perceive the reality I just elucidated. They see the reality of when I was eight years old, because back then it WAS the market for such products and technology.

-Paul (a.k.a. HAL-9000)

Feel free to share with me your thoughts on Nintendo, handheld gaming, or Hikaru Utada's gender at christiaan@tomshardware.com.