Nintendo: Brain Training Product Review Survey

As part of our ongo­ing mar­ket research we’d like to ask past and cur­rent users of  Nin­ten­do prod­ucts to share their expe­ri­ence with us via this 3‑question anony­mous sur­vey.  Please take this sur­vey if you have used a Nin­ten­do prod­uct your­self or have seen some­one else use it.

Take this 3‑question Survey

Please note that we do not endorse this prod­uct (or any oth­er) or any of the claims below. We inde­pen­dently track and ana­lyze emerg­ing brain/ cog­ni­tive sci­ence, tech­nol­ogy and inno­va­tion, and their real-world appli­ca­tions. This sur­vey helps us learn more about the latter.

Com­pany name: Nin­ten­do Enter­tain­ment System.

Com­pany descrip­tion (in their own words, in their own web­site): “Nin­ten­do Enter­tain­ment Sys­tem was 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.

Super Nin­ten­do Enter­tain­ment Sys­tem 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 64 new stan­dards in real­is­tic 3D gam­ing when it came out in 1996. Super Mario 64 was the sys­temics show­case game and thrilled mil­lions with its amaz­ing graph­ics and game­play.  The same year the N64 came out, the Game Boy Pock­et found its way into gamers school back­packs all over the world. It was small­er than the orig­i­nal Game Boy and came in a vari­ety of col­ors.  Game Boy Advance,featuring a larg­er screen and bet­ter graph­ics than pre­vi­ous ver­sions of the Game Boy, the GBA would go on to sell tens of mil­lions of units world­wide after its North Amer­i­can debut in 2001.  Nin­ten­do Game­Cube in 2001 also saw the release of the Nin­ten­do Game­Cube which one-upped the graph­ics and game­play of the N64. It was the first Nin­ten­do sys­tem to use opti­cal discs instead of car­tridges for its games.  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.  The Nin­ten­do DS is small­er, lighter, and has brighter screens than the pre­vi­ous mod­el and has been embraced by fans. Tens of mil­lions of DS Lites have sold world­wide since its release in ear­ly 2006. 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 the best-sell­ing lat­est gen­er­a­tion con­sole sys­tem in the world. In April, Nin­ten­do DSi intro­duced a revised portable sys­tem with two cam­eras and wire­less access to down­load­able games via the Nin­ten­do DSi Shop. Wii Sports Resort built on the Wii Sports phe­nom­e­non and includ­ed the new Wii Motion­Plus acces­so­ry, which made motion con­trols even more pre­cise. Wii Fit Plus brought new options and activ­i­ties to the fit­ness soft­ware and New Super Mario Bros. Wii brought the hand-held game to the home con­sole. The Nin­ten­do DS fam­i­ly of sys­tems set a new all-time cal­en­dar-year U.S. sales record for any con­sole or hand-held sys­tem. Nin­ten­do DSi XL debuted with screens that were 93 per­cent larg­er than those on Nin­ten­do DS Lite. Nin­ten­do and Net­flix announced a part­ner­ship that would allow most Net­flix sub­scribers to stream movies and TV shows direct­ly through their Wii con­soles. The Amer­i­can Heart Asso­ci­a­tion and Nin­ten­do of Amer­i­ca formed a mul­ti­fac­eted strate­gic rela­tion­ship aimed at help­ing peo­ple cre­ate healthy lifestyles through phys­i­cal­ly active play. The icon­ic Amer­i­can Heart Asso­ci­a­tion brand appeared on box­es for the Wii Fit Plus and Wii Sports Resort soft­ware and for the Wii sys­tem itself. Super Mario Galaxy 2 was just as well-received and well-reviewed as the orig­i­nal, Metroid: Oth­er M took the fran­chise in a new direc­tion and Don­key Kong Coun­try Returns revis­it­ed a clas­sic fran­chise. The Wii Games: Sum­mer 2010 com­pe­ti­tion brought thou­sands of peo­ple of all ages togeth­er in fun competitions.On March 27, 2011 in the Unit­ed States, Nin­ten­do launch­es the Nin­ten­do 3DS sys­tem, which allows users to view 3D con­tent with­out the use of spe­cial glasses.”

Main prod­uct name/s: Nin­ten­do DS, Nin­ten­do Dsi, Wii — for all ages.

Prod­uct descrip­tion (in their own words, in their own web­site): “Nin­ten­do DS is gam­ing that goes every­where. With amaz­ing games, touch screen con­trols, and built-in cre­ative tools, the Nin­ten­do DS sys­tem has some­thing for every­one.      Games you can’t find any­where else. Built-in fun with pho­tos, ani­ma­tion, and more.    Access to hun­dreds of down­load­able games. Local & online** mul­ti­play­er game­play. Two screens & intu­itive touch con­trols.  The Nin­ten­do DSi sys­tem plays near­ly all of the hun­dreds of great Nin­ten­do DS titles in stores. End­less hours of gam­ing excite­ment, built-in soft­ware to flex your cre­ative skills, and easy access to hun­dreds of down­load­able games. All this and more awaits when you pick up an amaz­ing­ly afford­able Nin­ten­do DSi or Nin­ten­do DSi XL sys­tem — two sizes for two great ways to play.

Wii is social and active enter­tain­ment that brings the whole fam­i­ly togeth­er. Pow­er-up your fam­i­ly game night with the Wii™ system.

Brain Age is a brain exer­cise soft­ware for Nin­ten­do Con­soles.  The soft­ware is build for bain work­outs in a fun way.  Some­times it become com­pet­i­tive too.  Just a few min­utes a day any­one can devel­op their men­tal abil­i­ty quick­ly. Can car­ry Nin­ten­do con­soles in vaca­tion, hol­i­days, etc.  Ninde­do 3DS and Nin­ten­do Dsi are gam­ing con­soles loaded with vari­ety of games for all ages.  It helps every­one to have bet­ter con­cen­tra­tion and faster meno­ry recalls.”

—

To learn more about Sharp­Brains’ gen­eral analy­sis of emerg­ing sci­ence, com­pa­nies, tech­nolo­gies and prod­ucts, please see…

• Our com­pre­hen­sive mar­ket report for deci­sion-mak­ers & inno­va­tors: Trans­form­ing Brain Health with Dig­i­tal Tools to Assess, Enhance and Treat Cog­ni­tion across the Lifes­pan: The State of the Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket 2010 ($975)
• Our book/ con­sumer guide for every­one with a brain, named a Best Book by AARP: The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: 18 Inter­views with Sci­en­tists, Prac­ti­cal Advice, and Prod­uct Reviews, to Keep Your Brain Sharp ($15 paper­back; $8 eBook)
• To Eval­u­ate Prod­ucts Mak­ing Brain Fitness/ Brain Train­ing Claims: 10-Ques­tion Eval­u­a­tion Check­list (free; online,  one-pager, bookmark)