Generation game (From Bournemouth Echo)

Generation game

7:00pm Wednesday 3rd March 2010 in

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NICOLE Kidman was hired to do it. So were Fern Britton, Phillip Schofield and members of Girls Aloud. And on any coach or train, you’re likely to see everyone from small children to grandparents doing it too.

Playing games on the Nintendo DS is one of the biggest leisure crazes for years. Some 130 million of the hand-held games consoles have been sold worldwide – and not just to teenagers.

Tomorrow sees the arrival in the shops of the fourth DS incarnation in just six years – the DSi XL.

It’s little bigger than a wallet, and opens to reveal two screens. The controls include a stylus which you use to interact with the games by touching one of the screens.

While there are a host of titles aimed at youngsters (favourites in our house are Lego Star Wars and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen), it is appealing to adults that has boosted the DS, thanks to games like Brain Training and Soduku.

Dr Mike Molesworth, senior lecturer in consumer behaviour and online marketing at Bournemouth University, wrote his PhD on adult consumption of video games.

He recalls that when the first DS came out in 2004, many people said it was inferior to the PSP (Play Station Portable). But whereas the PSP appealed to the “core teenage market”, the DS found new followers.

“Its success is down to the huge age range it’s popular with – from eight-year-olds playing Pokemon to parents doing crosswords,” he says.

The design and feel of the DS has helped keep it popular. “It’s a desirable consumer item. If you watch people hold them and open them and take out the stylus, it has an iPhone or Apple quality to it so people want to own it.”

One reason the DS is a success with adults is that they have bought into the idea that playing its games can be self-improving.

“Nintendo has done a good job of promoting that,” says Dr Molesworth.

The positive view of the DS is that it has made gaming a shared experience. Not only does it appeal across the generations, but because two DS owners sitting closely can join in the same game, there are stories of couples sitting in bed playing video games.

The negative view is that, at a time of social fragmentation, the DS appeals to our desire to sit and immerse ourselves in an individual experience when we’re in a public place, instead of just talking to each other.

But Dr Molesworth says: “I think Nintendo is probably the good guy in any of our concerns about video games.”

Some critics have already suggested the new DSi XL is underwhelming in the age of the iPhone, despite sporting 93 per cent bigger screens.

But being at the cutting edge of technology was never the DS’s strength. Despite the £150 price tag, many people will be keen to trade in their old DS. “Nintendo has really figured out this process of endlessly launching new upgrades,” says Dr Moleswort. “We had the DSi last year and now the DSi XL.

“It engages new interest and gets journalists writing about it – whereas without the new one you probably wouldn’t have wanted to feature the DS again.”