Whither family entertainment?

"It would seem that Nintendo's products are aimed at the child in all of us," the New York Times reports. The question, though, is whether cute games like Nintendogs - which "lets players raise and train virtual pets on the [handheld player] Nintendo DS" - will help Nintendo stay a successful, third-place, niche game-device maker as Sony and Microsoft battle it out for first. "Over the last five years, Mario has lost market share to the thugs of Grand Theft Auto as the audience for video games has gotten older and the games themselves have moved into the mainstream of pop culture," according to the Times. At the big games expo in #3 last week, "while most game publishers showed sequels, sports simulations and shooting games based on grim tropes such as gang violence and World War II," Nintendo was promoting the new Nintendogs and Donkey Konga and old favorites like Metroid, Super Mario Brothers, and The Legend of Zelda.