Here’s why Nintendo uses strange marketing language

If you’ve ever seen a Nintendo Direct or watched a Nintendo trailer with voiceover, you may have noticed some unconventional – and arguably strange – manner of speech.

Let’s break this down further. A big example of this is that when referencing a game, Nintendo always mentions “game”. Then when talking about its platforms, it always mentions “system”. 

In normal speech, you and I would say “Mario Kart World for Nintendo Switch 2”. Nintendo, however, references it as “the Mario Kart World game for the Nintendo Switch 2 system”. Even PlayStation and Xbox don’t use this manner of speech. So what’s up with that?

Nintendo itself doesn’t seem to want to comment on the matter. However, Polygon got in touch with former Nintendo of America employee Krysta Yang, who was willing to shed light on the situation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this all comes down to the legal side of things.

Yang shared the following:

“Essentially, this is a legal requirement for Nintendo to properly refer to their products at all times. The legal and [intellectual property] teams at Nintendo are very strict with how products are referred to. The legal team would use the example of the brand Bandaid and how that is actually a brand name but now the name has been diluted as people refer to any bandages as a bandaid. They do not want this to happen to any Nintendo product hence the very stilted way they would refer to all products.”

While you and I (and most people) may find Nintendo’s marketing speech odd, it’s unlikely to change anytime soon. If nothing else, we at least have a concrete explanation as to why it’s happening.