Washington Post ran an article<\/a> on this trend noting how the target market was \u201cstressed-out adults.\u201d\u00a0 Clearly this stressed-out adult market can only have grown in recent months.<\/p>\nIt was this potential that made us so disappointed when the first product announced in March was a Lego Super Mario line.\u00a0 This line of simple sets is basically a toys to life product.\u00a0 It was similar to what Lego had tried with the now defunct Dimensions product line (a Lego Dimensions movie is scheduled this fall).<\/p>\n
The Lego Super Mario line was not necessarily bad, it just seemed uninspiring.\u00a0 Furthermore, the target audience was even younger than for Lego Dimensions, seemingly 6 to 8-year olds.\u00a0 Considering a key challenge Lego and Nintendo face is retaining consumers as they grow out of childhood this did nothing to move the needle.<\/p>\n
This week\u2019s announcement was different.\u00a0 Lego and Nintendo announced a new set based on the classic 1980s NES.\u00a0 Furthermore, this is no simple Lego set.\u00a0 It is over 2,600 pieces and will cost $230.\u00a0 In other words, this decorative Lego system is in the same price range as an actual working Nintendo console.<\/p>\n
There is some limited interaction with the new Lego Super Mario sets.\u00a0 The Bluetooth enabled characters from Super Mario can be used to produce classic console sounds from the NES set.\u00a0 However, clearly this is targeted at a much different audience.\u00a0 This is more what we were thinking when we heard of the Nintendo\/Lego partnership.<\/p>\n
Microsoft and Sony have a strong lock on video game consumers age 15 to 30.\u00a0 Nevertheless, Nintendo has a major growth opportunity in reaching consumers outside that range.\u00a0 Even within that teenage\/young adult demographic there is a growing base of \u201cbuilding\u201d consumers.\u00a0 These are the aging kids that grew up playing games like Minecraft and Roblox.<\/p>\n
The challenge Microsoft and Sony face is they have focused on a more serious core gamer.\u00a0 Their big products focus heavily on action and mature themes like horror, survival in a post-apocalyptic world, etc.\u00a0 This is clearly a huge audience, but it leaves a major opening to reach consumers that want lighter themes.<\/p>\n
Nintendo and Lego both have a big opportunity into reaching the \u201crelaxation\u201d consumer.\u00a0 These are consumers that play games for fun and are not necessarily into the competitive aspects that drive much of the core industry.<\/p>\n
The video game industry has matured to the point where it consists of many unique segments, each with its own target audience and growth prospects.\u00a0 The core market of heavily competitive 15 to 30 years old gamers is huge but not growing that much.\u00a0 The market for gamers of all ages that want high-end products that are serious but not as intense is also huge and growing much faster.<\/p>\n
The new Lego products launch in August.\u00a0 It can be expected that we will see future efforts from this partnership.\u00a0 It is not so much the individual sales of these products, but the fact that they are indicative of major trends in the overall video game industry.<\/p>\n
DFC Intelligence is participating in investor calls to look at how public video game companies are likely to be impacted by COVID-19. This includes public companies with open-world games that have growth potential. Contact us<\/a>\u00a0for more information or to schedule a consulting call and hear our current thinking on the video gaming and digital entertainment space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this year the Lego Group and Nintendo announced a partnership.\u00a0 This clearly has some intriguing possibilities.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the first products shown seemed to miss the potential.\u00a0 However, this changed with the announcement this week of a Lego set built around the classic NES. Lego and Nintendo are two classic toy brands for kids.\u00a0 However, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":17273,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[49,56],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dfcint.com\/dossier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17272"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dfcint.com\/dossier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dfcint.com\/dossier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dfcint.com\/dossier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dfcint.com\/dossier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17272"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dfcint.com\/dossier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17275,"href":"https:\/\/www.dfcint.com\/dossier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17272\/revisions\/17275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dfcint.com\/dossier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dfcint.com\/dossier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dfcint.com\/dossier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dfcint.com\/dossier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}