Tech - Nintendo not kiddy enough?

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"After years of being called too kiddy for hardcore gamers, Nintendo is finally being rebuked for abandoning their kiddiness - shown in their 21% drop in profits. Seems like a bit of a stretch to me..."

This is so true. I know a few years ago I only thought of Nintendo as a console for kids, but these days it's getting out of hand with the rated "T" for teen games.

I think it was last month, or maybe the month before, that Karen and I went looking for a console for the kids. They're 5 and 6, and I know that at least one of them really likes to watch (and asks to play) when I'm playing games on my XBox. So, we went looking at consoles for them.

Well, the first thing I looked at was getting another XBox. I know, from my own experience, that there are a ton of games out there for the XBox, but after looking at shelves upon shelves of games, I quickly realized that maybe one or two were suitable for kids under the age of 12 or so.

So it was on to the next one. The PS2. Sony, they make things for everyone, right? Well, not really. The only kid-friendly games that I could find involved Barbie and Shrek. Well, the one game is fine, but the Barbie stuff? Who cares about her magic horse? So on to the third.

The Gamecube has to be the most kid-friendly. I think I spotted about 4 games without looking too hard that my kids could play. But that's still only 4, and they're kids. They have the attention span of a gnat. They'll be so bored of those games within days that it would be a waste of money without the opportunity to buy them different games.

The price for the Nintendo Gamecube is right, that's for sure. But really, why can't anyone make games for kids any more? Even the old consoles when I was a kid, Atari, Activision, all those, had games that kids could play. Now the companies are just making games that will attract the big bucks from the tweens. There's a market for kids under 12, and maybe the 3 Giants should realize this and start asking their developers to make something geared towards them. Oh, and don't get me started about the learning software that you can buy for the PC...