Please read this Gamasutra article.

These indicators serve to observe which types of audiences consoles manufacturers are aiming at.

Non surprising, Nintendo's licenced products are largely aiming for the Everyone segment.
Everybody's been thinking at least once that Nintendo's machines were kiddie toys.

Well, it wouldn't be that far from truth, actually.

Most interesting is how Nintendo's two latest consoles, the DS and the Wii, despite the heavy amount of games and non-games sold for more mature people, and the ads featuring grown ups, are largely furnished for the Everyone market.

This does not mean that the E or E+ games are solely made for kids, but they're surely not made to appeal to adults in any particular way, due to their general friendly cuteness.
It makes these games playable in family, with no age considered being a noticeable barrier.

One could think that one of the keys to success is to favour games which appear to be messageless and non opinionated. Perfectly neutral.

Lots of people get the idea that Nintendo is trying to sell games to adults, but as a whole, they're actually far from trying to do so at all.

See, saying that they're selling games that everyone can play is misleading.
As a whole, it is correct, but in the details, it's wrong.
When refined, we see that it can't be understood as "it has enough games that appeal to any segment". Some may think this means there's a more or less equal distribution of E, E+, T and M games, to appeal to everybody's tastes, but as we see on the graphics, this is incorrect.

The fair conclusion, which many got decades ago anyway, is that if you want consoles that do really appeal to all ages, you may look for Sony's and Microsoft's.
The situation has hardly changed as far as Nintendo is concerned.

I'm sorry but you can't just look at the average ESRB rating for a console and say...well...anything meningful about the games to that console. Yes a game that has an E rating will contain less blood and voilence than a M rated game. But that does not in any way reflect how good said game is. I love splatter movies. I have spent the odd hour having fun torturing digital people in Postal 2. And I still giggle like a school boy whenever I turn someone into very tiny chunks of flesh with a flak cannon. But. Super Mario is still alot of fun for me. Personal appeal for a certain console is based on how much fun you would have with the games to that system. Not in how much blood they contain.

MrCIA:
I'm sorry but you can't just look at the average ESRB rating for a console and say...well...anything meningful about the games to that console. Yes a game that has an E rating will contain less blood and voilence than a M rated game. But that does not in any way reflect how good said game is. I love splatter movies. I have spent the odd hour having fun torturing digital people in Postal 2. And I still giggle like a school boy whenever I turn someone into very tiny chunks of flesh with a flak cannon. But. Super Mario is still alot of fun for me. Personal appeal for a certain console is based on how much fun you would have with the games to that system. Not in how much blood they contain.

Exactly. Possibly the best games, in fact, are not even rated M. Super Mario Brothers 3, Super Mario World, FFIX, FFVII....you can't just say Nintendo is only catering to the younger crowd just because they have more games that are rated E or E10+.

Going on ESRB ratings I don't think is always the most wise way to judge who a game is best for. Many games are very immature affairs that any adult would be hard pressed to like, but have blood and gore so get earn an M rating, while on the other end there are E and Teen rated games that simply don't appeal to many kids, who the rating implies the game belongs to.

Many of the best games I can name are rated either E or T, just Mario games, Okami, Shadow of the Colossus, ICO, even Portal was rated T.

Saying something like "saying that they're selling games that everyone can play is misleading" takes the ESRB rating system as an accurate measure of what games are appropriate to who. When really, the ESRB system is in most cases just a measure of gore/violence than anything else.

A quote I just thought of and decided to dig up that is along these same lines...

"There's a very clear certification indicating that 12 year olds aren't to be playing it (Manhunt) but there's no denying that they play it anyway because there's no one other than 12 year olds are into this sort of thing. Gushing breathlessly about garrote decapitation cranial explosions is a good way to win friends in middle school but around the office water-cooler it's a good way to lose them."

-Yahtzee's review of Manhunt

There have always been more 'E' rated games than all others. Does that means that EVERY console is labeled 'kid-friendly'?

No.

That's because the AAA first party games on Nintendo consoles, 9 times out of 10, are rated 'E'. Sony AA are more likely to be 'T', and Microsoft's almost always seem to be rated 'M'

That doesn't mean that there aren't any great 'M' rated games on Nintendo systems, nor does that mean that there's no 'E' rated games on the XBox.

It just means that if you wanna see a great game with a different rating, you'll have to get a third party developer to do it.

Plus, if we're just dealing with Nintendo here... last I checked, a lot of adults enjoyed Mario games.

MrCIA:
I'm sorry but you can't just look at the average ESRB rating for a console and say...well...anything meningful about the games to that console.

Well, there are people who seem to think such numbers to reveal something.
We pretty much can see, according the content and standard rules as they apply in the USA, what kind of games one has to expect to see on X, Y or Z console, and this, as per my point, finely shows what kind of targets are favoured, and more importantly, the real kind of content - or lack of thereof - you're ought to find.

Yes a game that has an E rating will contain less blood and voilence than a M rated game. But that does not in any way reflect how good said game is.
I love splatter movies. I have spent the odd hour having fun torturing digital people in Postal 2. And I still giggle like a school boy whenever I turn someone into very tiny chunks of flesh with a flak cannon. But. Super Mario is still alot of fun for me. Personal appeal for a certain console is based on how much fun you would have with the games to that system. Not in how much blood they contain.

That is incorrect. First, the quality of a game has nothing to do with my point. I play violent games because I like the depicted violence they contain.
I'm fairly sure I'm not the only one thinking in such ways, otherwise I've been seeing something special in God of War which everybody else missed.

thebobmaster:
Exactly. Possibly the best games, in fact, are not even rated M. Super Mario Brothers 3, Super Mario World, FFIX, FFVII....you can't just say Nintendo is only catering to the younger crowd just because they have more games that are rated E or E10+.

Come on. Super Mario World, Galaxy and Minish Cap are great games, but who exactly talked about good or bad games exactly?

Not me.

GrowlersAtSea:
Going on ESRB ratings I don't think is always the most wise way to judge who a game is best for.

In the case of demographics, based on the content (violence, language, etc.), it's actually well valid.

Many games are very immature affairs that any adult would be hard pressed to like, but have blood and gore so get earn an M rating, while on the other end there are E and Teen rated games that simply don't appeal to many kids, who the rating implies the game belongs to.

All games are immature to some point. However, I clearly see the difference between the immaturity of collecting stars, and the immaturity of slicing heads.

Many of the best games I can name are rated either E or T, just Mario games, Okami, Shadow of the Colossus, ICO, even Portal was rated T.

That's quality, which is not the point.

Saying something like "saying that they're selling games that everyone can play is misleading" takes the ESRB rating system as an accurate measure of what games are appropriate to who.

It is accurate enough.

When really, the ESRB system is in most cases just a measure of gore/violence than anything else.

That's incorrect, and this factor alone is very indicative.

I think the real problem here is just how people diss the ESRB rating.
That's trendy.

A quote I just thought of and decided to dig up that is along these same lines...

"There's a very clear certification indicating that 12 year olds aren't to be playing it (Manhunt) but there's no denying that they play it anyway because there's no one other than 12 year olds are into this sort of thing. Gushing breathlessly about garrote decapitation cranial explosions is a good way to win friends in middle school but around the office water-cooler it's a good way to lose them."

-Yahtzee's review of Manhunt

Yes, sure, people above twenty years old don't enjoy horror films anymore.
Talking about what's unwise, quoting Yahtzee, especially here, is the latest thing I'd do. He may get right from time to time, but he's also very provocative and going for sensationalism, which owes him a lot of attention, but does not make him necessarily accurate everytime he swings a sharp edged comment. It's humour, and I wouldn't take his word literally like you do.

I quoted that because it makes the very valid point that a mature rated game does not mean that it is a game for mature people. The rating systems are a superficial way to judge maturity, if you added blood and gore to Wii sports it could earn an M rating nice and quick, but that wouldn't make it any more mature.

Let's face it, the biggest factor in video game ratings tends to be violence. Drug use and sex appear fairly rarely in games compared to how often you shoot, blow up, or maim others. ESRB takes the flak it does because on one end of the spectrum people feel that it does a very poor job of catching the most mature games and giving them AO ratings, while on the other end what exactly they will give higher ratings to can be off (they penalize games for things like gambling). Although they can be unfairly compared to the MPAA (it is far easier to watch and rate a movie than play a game and spot everything that might be offensive, as the "Hot Coffee" thing demonstrated a couple years ago) that is the kind of standard they're held to, fairly or not.

I don't think you can be further off by saying that Nintendo is not trying to sell games to everyone because the majority of their games are rated E. The success alone of Nintendo in both the handheld market and now the Wii shows that they're trying to, and selling to, more than just kids.

I guess it's just hard for me to accept that anyone is dense enough to honestly think that the ESRB or the MPAA or the 5-star rating system can tell you anything substantive about a game/movie/restaurant etc.

Arbre, you were implying that truly great games cannot be rated less than M, because you said, direct quote, "This does not mean that the E or E+ games are solely made for kids, but they're surely not made to appeal to adults in any particular way, due to their general friendly cuteness." However, if a game does not appeal to adults, or presumably teenagers, then isn't it a not so great game, because only kids can enjoy it?

Tsk Tsk Tsk.

Its funny how some of yall leave out some key factors in this subject. Yes its true that Nintendo is targeting a larger audience, but its not just based on age alone. They are targeting the whole family so they can all play. Another factor is the DS and Wii control scheme. Touch controls and motion controls are more appealing to a non-gamer then given a generic controller with a 100 buttons (thats how they would see it).

As for the Xbox360 and PS3 appealing to all ages, thats a yes and no. Yes they can make games for all ages and everybody. But that does not mean they are going to play them. Like I said before, not everybody will get near those controllers except for the hardcore and maybe the casual players.

So in other words, Nintendo is just appealling to a wider audience so everybody can play, not just by age.

P.S. the age rating in no way affects the quality if the game. But then again we are not talking about that now are we?

Arbre: I can appreciate that you like violent games considering I myself enjoy violent games, but. Simple violence is not an indicator of a good game, and people chose games based on what they like. I have a hard time seeing anyone going to the ESRB website and picking a game from their list of rated games instead of chosing a game based on a review. No doubt there are many gamers who prefer "M" games over "E" games. But to simply state that "E" games would not appeal to any particular group of gamers simply because they are "childish" seems to miss the simple facts of Nintendos succes with the Wii.

As to immaturity in games I can simply say this: They are games. therefore they will always be seen as immature by some group of people. No matter the content.

Oh and before I forget. The ESRB rating specificaly states that they only list content. And then the content listed is primarily for parents to make an informed opinion of which game to let their children play: Ratings guide

ESRB:
The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) ratings are designed to provide concise and impartial information about the content in computer and video games so consumers, especially parents, can make an informed purchase decision. ESRB ratings have two equal parts: rating symbols suggest age appropriateness for the game and content descriptors indicate elements in a game that may have triggered a particular rating and/or may be of interest or concern.

MrKeroChan:
I guess it's just hard for me to accept that anyone is dense enough to honestly think that the ESRB or the MPAA or the 5-star rating system can tell you anything substantive about a game/movie/restaurant etc.

Oh please. Not only you're mixing the scale based analysis, identification and quantification of a game's content with a score (geez), but this is downright offensive and uncalled for.
I think the ESRB system does something well, it's at least telling you the nature of the content you're ought to get in a given game. The standard might be slightly fluctuating from a game to another, from time to time, but that is ought to be minor. If you think it's totally pointless, so be it. I don't, and obviously, some substancial amounts of cash are spent in order to prove that is matters.

Maybe you're not agreeing on the standards, but it is not here nor there.

thebobmaster:
Arbre, you were implying that truly great games cannot be rated less than M, because you said, direct quote, "This does not mean that the E or E+ games are solely made for kids, but they're surely not made to appeal to adults in any particular way, due to their general friendly cuteness." However, if a game does not appeal to adults, or presumably teenagers, then isn't it a not so great game, because only kids can enjoy it?

It was content related, not quality related.
The appeal part was in regards to what the games offer as content, not as quality.
Just as much as I like to go to the cinema because there's some film Noir or horror film that's out, and I want to see such films, and not because a Narnia look alike got five stars on five in most of the press, I will also surf the internet, and order a game because I want to play a given style or genre first.
The quality only enters the equation later on. Sometimes, it doesn't even the equation at all.

Zera:
Tsk Tsk Tsk.

Its funny how some of yall leave out some key factors in this subject. Yes its true that Nintendo is targeting a larger audience, but its not just based on age alone. They are targeting the whole family so they can all play. Another factor is the DS and Wii control scheme. Touch controls and motion controls are more appealing to a non-gamer then given a generic controller with a 100 buttons (thats how they would see it).

It's funny to see that though the control hardware kind opens the door to certain types of games that could appeal to casual people (PDA style is more intruitive, like mouse, for certain types of quick "desktop" games), we can see two things:

1. The ratios for E/E+10 games on all Nintendo consoles are pretty much all the same, safe for the Gamecube, which had a bit more M rated games, and strangely, that console didn't work as well as the others. Which probably gives a hint about the type of content consumers were expecting on a Nintendo console, and probably got disapointed.
But as all other consoles are concerned, even handheld ones (which goes back to the GBA), the N machines have been favouring the youth with "tone-neutral" games, that on systems which largely predated the attemps at reaching casual markets (Wii, DS), and the ratios for the two new consoles are not that different.

2. The controllers change nothing at all. If Nintendo wanted to aim for more M rated games, or say, hope AO rated games, but still played with the wiimote and the touchpad, they could. Easily.
M rated games are not less compatible with Nintendo's "new" control systems than on any other console (which relies on traditional controllers).

As for the Xbox360 and PS3 appealing to all ages, thats a yes and no. Yes they can make games for all ages and everybody. But that does not mean they are going to play them. Like I said before, not everybody will get near those controllers except for the hardcore and maybe the casual players.

That's a bit of a mixed bag of people, don't you think, and quite a vague copout. :)

So in other words, Nintendo is just appealling to a wider audience so everybody can play, not just by age.

Yes, but at the same time, they're clearly not putting much emphasis on the material that could be suited for older audiences.

P.S. the age rating in no way affects the quality if the game. But then again we are not talking about that now are we?

Champagne! :D

I wish more could see the light.
Seriously, I think there's some kind of logical lockdown going on here. Like if I was trying to get to a rather simple point, which apparently the gamasutra article articulated well enough, but the conclusion might not pe plesant, somehow, so the path of logical interpretation will constantly go offroad like if there was a giant ACME-magnet in front of a yet huge sign with "POINT" written on it.

I suspect this discussion is going to just keep going around in circles. But why not? I like to spin my chair from time to time so let's keep going. ^^

Arbre:
Yes, but at the same time, they're clearly not putting much emphasis on the material that could be suited for older audiences.

I believe they are placing a great deal of emphasis on material for older gamers. I believe they just don't target the 14-25 male demographic as intensely as Sony or Microsoft are. But what they are doing is targeting the traditional non-gamers. And according to what I have heard about the availability of the console they are doing a great job. The games they release seem to be either very simple and fun (Wii Sports) or be more engaging than your average "M" rated game (Compare Twilight Princess with F.E.A.R.: Perseus Mandate). The ESRB ratings do not really say very much about the content of a game. They simply state if certain, very specific types of content are present in a game.

oh...and Primeginia: You can call it whatever you want. I still call it hardcore.