All your base are belong to us.

For all of you playing along at home, it appears as if Nintendo has no intention of getting involved with MMO's any time soon. Satoru Iwata (CEO of Nintendo) recently stated that Nintendo believes MMO's are in the early stages and don't have a broad enough appeal for Nintendo to get involved. (Or at least that's what we say he said. Read the GameSpot interview here.)

Given our recent ruminations, we can't help wonder why Nintendo isn't eager to get into the MMO market. Or rather, we kind of understand why they do. Their past history with games shows that Nintendo has a knack for reaching a LOT of people. And they reach a lot of people by making their games fun. And yeah, we think MMO's are fun. But again, it prompts us to wonder about MMO gamers and whether or not they represent a distinct sub-culture. Are MMO gamers different than other gamers in a way that doesn't easily cross over into mass-market demographics? We think so. Even given the large numbers of MMO gamers (50+ million or so is a rough estimate we have often seen), it still represents a very small percentage of gamers, and an even smaller percentage of the general public. Yeah, WoW has 10 million players, but it isn't exactly a casual experience.

If MMO's are really going to take off and go from sub-culture to culture-at-large, we think the genre will need to find its Shigeru Miyamoto to breach the divide. A mass-market MMO that will appeal to casual gamers as well as dedicated MMO fans may seem like an impossibility, but if the genre wants to get past the devoted cult following of its current subscription base, we think the change is a necessary one.