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"Nintendo - where are the adverts?"

We've heard about 'big budget advertising' for the DS, but I still haven't seen any.

Surely if they're releasing this console officially on 11th March, Nintendo should start getting their messages into the minds of the Uk and European population now? Really going for it in the press, on TV and everywhere with their 'Touch Me!' advert.

The VIP DS thing was obviously one way of getting the message across. Get 3000 people to wear their advertising on a T-Shirt and shout about how good the DS is. I've already heard of people bringing theirs to schools and getting huge crowds, some of the younger guys at Taekwondo have seen a couple of people with one (one being a girl, so good news for Nintendo's push at female gamers) and I've obviously had a fair few interested people already at work after just one day.

But this is not enough. Nintendo need to start pushing their message now and it needs to be every 5 minutes. I've only seen the adverts on the back of Gamesmaster so far, and that's preaching to the converted! Every commercial TV station and every newspaper should now have DS advertising, or Sony will quite happily take all the thunder.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how good the console is, how much bickering is done about Battery life, graphics, abilities etc, the sales will be primarily from advertising and secondly from word of mouth.

I don't remember any Jap adverts except that woman standing in front of the DS not touching it (the slogan then being "Touch It!").

But the US adverts where the people write on the frosted windows and get replies back as if they were writing in Pictochat were very cool.

Dringo wrote:
> The TV ads in America and Japan were superb.

The Japanese ones?

Seriously?

True but the GB advertising presented it as a fashonable gadget and that's the sort of shallow approach that'll appeal to your average FHM/Topman person.

Topman and FHM combined = retards.

They're taking the DS around the country to specific shops and having events in places like Topman. They're hoping to get 500,000 people to play the DS by the time it's finished. Apparently.

I think lifestyle advertising, like putting it in FHM or whatever wouldn't be very useful, as, frankly, even with advertising, I don't think that those people that they would be targeting would buy the console anyway.

The TV ads in America and Japan were superb.

Gamepods are good and all, but this will only sell the machine to people with time to try them out. Sony did well at advertising because they realised that the casual gamer market wasn't well tapped and built their advertising around more recognisable things such as music and social activities.

Nintendo really need to get those people who wouldn't normally look in a game shop...

Yep.

You'll probably see the TV adverts towards the back end of Feb and early march time. In Middlesbrough's Game and Gamestation they are advertising it quite a lot now and both have a DS pod in there for people to play on.

Walking around in Cambridge there are boxes and boxes of DS' stacked up against the GAME window with a massive poster at Gamestation. Each shop has a section dedicated to it and Virgin, HMV and Gametron also have big posters.

That's how the advertisement begins. Don't expect TV ads until nearer the launch.