Research

This week in my PR publications course we get to design a business card and letterhead for an organization of our choice. Having loved video games since I was a little kid and wanting to get into the industry myself, I chose the company that first introduced me to my passion Nintendo. For the assignment, I want to capture the culture and mission of one of the industry’s most iconic brands into a form that is easily expressed to their audience through a business card and letterhead.

In the home console space, Sony and Microsoft are Nintendo’s biggest competitors with their Playstation and Xbox brands. As much as Nintendo likes to differentiate themselves from these two competitors by having established characters and different control methods, the audience for home consoles is still relatively the same which pits all three against each other.

Another huge part of Nintendo’s business lies in handheld gaming. Nintendo dominates the dedicated handheld market with it’s 3DS beating out Sony’s Playstation Vita. However when you include smartphones and tablets into the handheld market, Nintendo is struggling to attract new customers and retain the ones they have. Although Nintendo will never surpass smartphones install base, the silver lining with this market is that people who buy a handheld want to play games while people who buy a smartphone do not necessarily buy one with the intent to play games.

Nintendo’s core values are to innovate and to make quality products for it’s audience, but ultimately their goal is to bring people together . The company has a long history and each new product they create has something unique and creative with it’s design. Nintendo is not afraid to take risks in an effort to create new products and new industries. Take for example the Gameboy and Wii; two huge successes that were developed with innovation and quality in mind. Nintendo has some of the most iconic characters and are thoughtful in developing new and exciting games for each franchise. At the end of the day, Nintendo has been in the industry this long because they know how to have, make and create fun.