expanded-audience
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GameStop training video light on training, heavy on hilarity
Oh, GameStop. We have plenty of reasons to laugh at you. You call us up during dinner to coax us into trading stuff in, and you ask us about strategy guides and pre-orders every time we try to shop in your store. Now, it would seem you also like to employ what we've dubbed the "poor man's Lara Croft," as this very real training video shows. The video is kind of like watching a clown get the crap kicked out of him. You want to intervene, but every time he gets punched in the nose and you hear that honk sound, you can't help but laugh. Watch Ima and her amazing Zack Morris impressions after the break.
Cammie Dunaway welcomes new Wii owners
In an open letter posted on Kotaku as part of their series of "Welcome to the Family" letters, Cammie Dunaway gave one of the lengthiest statements we've seen from the recently-hired executive vice president of sales and marketing. The letter is directed at all the new Wii owners who have joined the fold since the holidays, and lays out the attractive features of the Wii in a manner appropriate for a new gamer. Although fundamentally, we're not sure how many expanded audience members are reading gaming blogs.It's quite interesting to see what Nintendo is pitching to new gamers these days -- downloadable games are given a big push (World of Goo is now enough of a genuine hit to be the face of WiiWare, apparently!), as is Mario Kart Wii. Dunaway classifies the massively popular Mario Kart Wii as a "bridge game" that "really leads in two directions: not just from simple-to-more-involving, but also acting like a link between new gamers and veteran ones."
DS Daily: Expanded worldview
The DS is purportedly bringing in new gamers who wouldn't traditionally care about video games at all, with stuff like Nintendogs, Brain Age, and Personal Trainer: Cooking (as seen in the above ad). We're happy to see Nintendo capturing the interest of people who previously would have seen our hobby as either too kid-oriented or too teenage-dude-oriented.Have you seen it work? Have you encountered the "expanded audience" out in the world? Become acquainted with any new DS owners lured in by language training or math? For our part, we seem to be meeting more late-to-the-party gamers than ever these days (in our limited capacity as socially inept shut-ins to meet people).
