1.

Introduction
Nintendo ( ) Japanese for Leave luck to Heaven is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded in 1889, it produced handmade playing cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and low-cost hotels. Nintendo acquired first rights to distribute video game console from Magnavox in 1974. Nintendo soon developed into a video game company, becoming one of the most influential in the industry and Japan's third most valuable listed company, with a market value of over US$85 billion. Nintendo Entertainment System: Introduced in 1985, the NES was an instant hit. Over the course of the next two years, it almost single-handedly revitalized the video game industry. Selling over 60 million units, people brought games like Mario and Zelda into their homes for the first time on the NES. Game Boy: Game Boy, which came out in 1989, was closely associated with the classic game Tetris when it debuted. Game Boy is the most successful video game system ever released selling over 150 million units worldwide. Super Nintendo Entertainment System (NES): The SNES was released in 1991 and featured 16-bit technology. More processing power meant more entertaining games which helped the SNES sell more than 49 million systems worldwide. Nintendo DS: Featuring two screens, including a touch screen, a microphone, built-in Wi-Fi capability, and backward compatibility, the DS is an incredibly successful portable gaming device beating its rivals in the marketplace by a wide margin. Wii: In 2006, Nintendo introduced the Wii and with it several advanced, revolutionary features. Wireless motion-sensitive remote controllers, built-in Wi-Fi capability, and a host of other features have made the Wii one of the best-selling latest generation console system in the world.

2. Brand Image and Brand Personality

When we talk of brand image, we think about the perception that the market has about the brand. Brand image is built by consistent good work and products offered by the company over a period of time. And if we can attribute some specific human traits of the brand, then the brand has a personality. These two terms are heavily interrelated. The brand Nintendo is most famous for its motion sensing remote control. Though Nintendo is not as aggressive as its competitors in the marketing of its products, it has a strong brand image today. Nintendo is synonymous with brightly coloured, fun kids games. Earlier its products were meant mostly for the younger generation, but they now attract even older people. 2.1 Too Kiddy Nintendo was seen as safe and family-friendly, while Genesis (by Sega) was edgy and cool. "Genesis does what Nintendo doesn't". But look where that got them. Then came the N64. The expensive cartridges limited the amount of games produced for it. Most of the N64 games were hardly "mature" (except games like Conker and GoldenEye,) even though they were very good. This coupled with the Pokemon Explosion of 1998 only added to Nintendo's kiddy image. 2.2 Too Casual Nintendo products may no longer be kiddy but they are definitely casual, right? Well, yes there are many casual games coming from Nintendo but the idea that the entire company is casual is a perception that may have actually been intentionally created by Nintendo. The company went out of its way to brand the Wii as a casual experience in the eyes of the mainstream media. Wii Fit and Wii Sports are the only games you see advertised. However, they need to be advertised in order for their target market to notice them. Meanwhile, core games like Metroid Prime 3: Corruption receive little to no marketing because most people who will buy it probably already know about it. The core learn about their games months in advance through websites and magazines. 2.3 Too Easy To all of the people saying that Nintendo's core games have been "dumbed down" for casuals, remember that so much of what made old-school games hard were the limitations of the hardware. Challenge was the only thing making the simple design interesting. All you could do in MegaMan was run, jump and shoot. How do you make that engaging? You make it hard as hell. Today, games can be so complex that the controls themselves are challenging enough. Add artificial challenges, like fewer lives or more enemies and you risk becoming frustrating rather than fun. Perhaps some core Nintendo games could stand to be more challenging, though they often contain challenging elements that are difficult to find like Hyper Mode in Metroid, The Cave of Ordeals in Zelda, The Purple Coin challenges in Mario and the tournament scenes for Smash and Mario kart, but in

the end they are still good games. Ease and accessibility certainly shouldn't keep a core gamer from trying them.

3. Brand Positioning
Brand positioning involves creating a niche in the market by using the traditional marketing strategies like pricing, promotion, packaging, distribution and competition. Brand Nintendo has been synonymous with Wii in recent times and NES and GameBoy earlier. It has positioned itself in the market using following strategies.

3.1 Positioning Strategies

It is successfully positioned as the only family oriented console that supports movement and exercise. Attributes serve as points of difference in the competitive gaming console market. Motion oriented gaming appealed to nontraditional gamers and promoted activity. Motion sensing technology allowed usage by inexperienced through use of purposely simple controller design. Design facilitates access to features such as online play with multiple players, internet access, instant messages, news, weather and photo shooting. Smaller, energy efficient, and quieter consoles differentiates Nintendo products from its competitors giving it an edge over them. Wii incorporates wireless controller thus facilitating simpler controlling.

3.2 Pricing Strategies

Adequate, but not excessive processing power keeps component costs low. Nintendo Wii was launched at $249, which was nearly half that of the competition. This pricing strategy employed by Nintendo allowed purchases by a larger percentage of the newly extended target market. Allowed purchases by a larger percentage of the newly extended target market.

3.3 Competitive Strategies Expanded market campaign to girls, women, moms, dads and grandparents. The following graphs are indicative of Nintendos position in the market:

4. Brand Extension
According to various researches and analysis, video gaming market is primarily limited to males between 18 and 35 years. Nintendo decided that instead of producing a product better than the Microsoft and Sony, they would expand their market to a much larger audience and boost the population of gamers to attract customers of all ages. Nintendo decided to create a game console that would focus on family entertainment. New consoles would be small, quiet, energy efficient and the CPU would not need as much processing power as their competitors. Brand extension has been categorized into adding new features to the existing product line and to come with new set of products. 4.1 Proposed new features in the existing product range Nintendo will continue the motion control route with a more refined evolution of the current Wii controller. I would expect even fewer buttons (I can hear you all groan) and a more accurate motion and pointer system.

Nintendo needs to consider newer media choices, which would probably involve a proprietary high-capacity disc, since Nintendo is unlikely to ever embrace Blu-ray. If all the systems had similar controls, even with a horsepower difference, multiplatform games would be easier to make, much to the benefit of Nintendo.

4.2 Possible new product line Gaming Mobile Online Gaming

4.3 Improving the marketing and advertisement strategies