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How Nintendo survived on nostalgia marketing

Nintendo is probably the single most recognizable name in the gaming industry. Throughout the years, they have managed to remain as one of the most well-known, respectable and admired names in gaming. People from all over the world have absolutely adored Nintendo’s games for many years, with some of the people’s childhoods being fully shaped by their games.

It’s estimated, that Nintendo is worth over $36 billion dollars, and thus has a very big and firm grasp on the gaming market.

The games that Nintendo has released were never hailed for their fanciness in graphics and the like. Rather, their games were always known for their playability, fun-aspect, amazing soundtrack, and, most importantly, its characters.

Nintendo’s characters and game symbols have been used very extensively in business and commerce. With some of their characters being over 40 years old, they’re almost universally-recognized, and the businesses utilize it heavily, sometimes in ways previously unseen. According to David Clarke, the marketing manager of Spinia Casino, using characters from well-recognized franchises, whether they be gaming, movie or TV-show franchises, aids greatly in encouraging more customers to join. Clarke has identified their Nintendo-based slot games as one of the most successful sources of traffic aiding in their becoming a top rated online casino, as many gamblers have also been avid gamers in the past, and given their average age bracket, they’d be just the right age when Nintendo games started becoming popular.

On a glance, there are thousands of other games that, on paper, are superior to Nintendo’s best-selling games in almost every other way, so it’s doubtless that Nintendo’s main advantage is its well-known and recognizable characters, and it fully capitalizes on that in many different manifestations.

Long-lasting Successful Franchises

Despite having released numerous wildly successful new titles in the last few years, it can’t be argued, that most of Nintendo’s “strength” lies in their older franchises such as Mario, Legend of Zelda, Super Smash Bros, etc.

These games have been around for decades now, and are universally-adored by millions of people around the world. Moreover, each subsequent release brings something new, keeping the gamers always happy. Despite the franchises being very old, stagnation has never even been a factor, as Nintendo manages to always meet the hype by bringing something new and exciting to their new releases.

Hand-held devices

One of the other things that Nintendo is often recognized for is its success with the handheld gaming devices. The handhelds have always had a sense of Nostalgia around them, and Nintendo is the sole reason for that. Those of us who have had the Gameboy devices in the past know what a blessing it was, and fondly remember them.

There were other handheld devices as well, such as the Playstation Portable, which, to an extent, were more technologically advanced and impressive than Nintendo’s handhelds, but they did lack an “Oompf” that Nintendo had.

The handhelds are Nintendo’s game, and this has been proven with Nintendo Switch. The switch was released back in 2017, and since then, it has sold just over 50 million devices around the world, making it one of their most successful consoles ever.

In their Defense

With all these things being said, one thing is clear as a day – though they may keep releasing new titles to the same franchises for all these years, it can not be denied that the way they do it is extremely impressive.

Super Mario Odyssey was phenomenally successful and has ranked in high-nines on most of the game reviewers’ 10-scale ratings. When the whole community wholeheartedly agrees that a game is a masterpiece, then there’s definitely something to it. The game was released after numerous very successful Mario games like Super Mario Galaxy series, Super Mario 3D world, and more. These games, by themselves, already rank in the top-10 greatest of all-time games for some of the lists of respected gaming authorities. Outdoing these games to such an extent only shows the level of dedication that Nintendo has for its franchises and games, and shows that they’re willing to deliver exactly what the gamers need.

Games like the Legend of Zelda have shown this time-and-time again. It’s a franchise that has continually managed to impress and spoil the fans. After older, massively successful titles like “A link to the Past”, Nintendo has published games like “Ocarina Of Time” and “Twilight Princess”, which, for many years, have been regarded as some of the greatest games of all time. To top this all off, Zelda’s “Breath of the Wild”, which was released on Nintendo Switch back in 2017, has been an absolute masterpiece and is regarded as one of the highest points of gaming.

It’s precisely because of games like these that Nintendo has managed to stay at the top. Their approach is to focus on the games that are already there and expand on them by making better and better releases with each year. So far it has worked amazingly for them, and the fans are happy too!

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