An interesting thought occurred to me going over your “Nintendo’s Shield” article.

In summary of it, Nintendo’s shield is mainly what sets them apart of MS and Sony. This circulates around their values, goals, and driving forces being very different. As an example, Sony and MS will try to push the “motion idea” onto their current consumer base in the same fashion of how they go about developing and producing software today. This means they will, for all intents and purposes, not change their development strategy or approach except to add in “some motion”. They will run into the same wall (or not even reach it more likely) that all 3rd party developers have run into and been unable to pass. The right software.

They’ll tack on such camera/motion controls in very predictable ways (Natal will likely be very limited to single-player and “taking turns” applications).

Now here’s the idea that came to my mind and maybe I should send this to Nintendo if they don’t already have it. How would Nintendo intend to stay out of the Red Ocean? (Maybe I’m writing what you already know) Sustaining innovation again and again is extremely hard to do from top to bottom (think GC to Wii revolution) for many reasons. Some reasons are that:

• You may run out of ideas of how to effectively tackle new markets (or the technology/path is not yet feasible to do so)
• “Revolutionizing” too often and you will run the risk of alienating your new market (by not giving it time, disruption is not overnight)

You alluded to that Nintendo will stay at the low tier, not allowing anyone to enter or adapt their platform below theirs.

What would you say about a strategy where Nintendo:

• Continues to stay at it’s core of arcade game-play for software (NSMBW, Wii-titles, MK: Wii, likely new Zelda: Wii, etc.)
• Stay at the low-tier from generation to the next, staying in the Blue Ocean (no SNES, N64, GC etc. decline into the Red Ocean)
• Continue to provide “Bridge Titles” like MK:Wii, likely Zelda Wii to help draw consumers down-market
• Provide incremental evolutions (peripherals like M+, Balance Board, Vitality Sensor) or “mini-revolutions” over time (something that would integrally enhance the Wiimote like projection display or something)

I can see the last one being on point since Iwata listed as they plan to come out with a “new proposal” every 1-2yrs when speaking in reference to more peripherals like the Vitality Sensor at the investor Q&A this Spring.

Iwata has altered the processes within Nintendo so that it becomes a Wheel of Disruption. Remember the bongos? Iwata sent like three developers out to go make a bunch of different controllers and at the end they chose the bongos. Maybe the bongos were a little ridiculous, but the creation of such a process resulted in the Wii-Remote.

Iwata wants to present these new controllers every one or two years is a fruit of this process, of this Wheel. Many of these new devices will not catch on. But that is not the point. The point is that some of them will. And that changes everything.

One of the ‘rules’ I’ve heard of people very successful in business is that although they fail many, many times, they manage it so their failures are *small* and their success is *big*. Putting out these devices minimizes the risk. If the Balance Board failed, oh well. But it caught on big time. If the Wii had failed, Nintendo would not have been broken. But it did succeed.

You can see a pattern that when Nintendo is wrong, they are wrong small. When they are right, they are right big time. This is correctly managed.

Contrast this to the PS3 that bet everything on the “HD Revolution”. If Sony was right, it would have been right big time. But if Sony was wrong, it would be wrong big time. Well, Sony was wrong and the losses are massive.

Curiously, Christensen applies the Wheel of Disruption in a macro-context, and he uses it to demonstrate the rise and fall of the Japanese economy. He cites the rise of Japan was precisely because of wheels of Disruption occurring within Japanese companies. For example, the most famous disruptive company in the world is (believe it or not) Sony. Sony used the micro-transistor and created a whole new sort of disruptive products such as the walkman. Japanese car companies disrupted American car companies. History of post-WW2 Japan is a history of many disruptive companies. At the tail end of this would be Nintendo’s Famicom/NES disrupting the video game industry in America and everywhere else.

Japan’s economic decline is due to many reasons, but Christensen cites that the Wheel of Disruption is no longer turning in that country. Disruptive companies there are no longer disruptive. Christensen defines this macro Wheel of Disruption in a way where employees are free to exit and found their own companies and all. He cites differences in Japan and America in why the Japanese economy stopped.

Note that even though the Japanese economy was in decline, Nintendo doing its disruptive dance with the Wii shot the company’s value almost higher than any other in Japan. So clearly there is a big correlation between a disruptive company and its growth with Japan. Yamauchi, in his last interview, said that he hoped the ‘Revolution’ would not only save gaming but would reinvigorate all of Japan. Nintendo was certainly shooting for the moon.

This is why I believe the Wii, in Japan, is trying to help jumpstart certain anime companies and other media. They used to be huge Japanese cultural exports like video games.

But back to Nintendo, a sustaining move would be for Nintendo to compete with Natal or the Wand. Nintendo has no intention of doing that. Motion Plus was a move to make sure Sony and Microsoft didn’t get outside their shrinking Core Box.

Nintendo thought User Generated Content would be the next big disruptive thing. Well, you know how that went.

If Vitality Sensor performs well, I bet Nintendo will include such sensors with the successor to the Wii. Nintendo loves sensors. However, they likely won’t be like how the Vitality Sensor is. Have you ever imagined, when holding the Wii-Mote, that it could sense your heartbeat or other things through your hands? Exercise machines obviously have such sensors in their handles. Why not game controllers?

I laugh at all these people saying Nintendo will put out a Wii HD, meaning a what we know as the Wii but with HD output. How little they know Nintendo. As Reggie said, “It wouldn’t just be HD output…”, Reggie is trying to politely hint to our disruption-ignorant “game journalist” at Nintendo’s Wheel of Disruption.

Nintendo knows that in order for the next console to be successful, Nintendo has to disrupt the Wii. Nintendo will not make a Wii 2 with HD and better motion controls. That would be a path to irrelevance. No surprise there.

Nintendo fully expects the competition to copy them. However, Nintendo has to be surprised at how poorly Microsoft and Sony are copying them. Natal? The Wand? Good grief. And the software they are showing… Yuck!

One of the best things about disruption is that tons of money, which is Microsoft and Sony’s advantage, ends up being bad to the disruptive process. It is considered “bad money”. Christensen advises the disruptive segment of the company to be ’starved’. This is why Iwata likes to talk about how he chose a few developers, gave them no time and no money, and talk about what they made. It is not because, as some “game journalists” say, that Iwata enjoys torturing his employees. It is because it is a disruptive process. Less money equals better products. Who knew!?

The business of video games is very, very tough. Not only is a company faced with the daunting challenge of penetrating non-gamers, the company is faced with keeping the fire of interest burning for current consumers. It is pretty funny how Nintendo is doing this. Their greatest successes end up being their biggest problems and they must be thrown out the window! What created the Wii must be abandoned. What created the DS must be gone. In the same way, the DS came about because Nintendo threw out the old Gameboy thinking. Wii came about because Nintendo threw out the old console way of thinking.

I believe the long view picture is for Nintendo to create “Endless Revolutions”. The Wii is just the *first* ‘revolution’. The next console should be the *second* revolution. So on and so forth.

Meanwhile, Sony and Microsoft, so used to wielding their blunt strength and money in a sustaining move, end up being like big slow bears unable to catch the swift fox.

http://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/email-nintendos-shield-defense-sustained-disruption/

That article was pointless.

^how so? It covers a good deal of the idea of disruption strategy as it pertains to Nintendo

I don't know, because it's not supposed to back up 100 years of research disruption and should be irrelevant to consoles? Though I can't imagine why consoles are immune.

Maelstrom seems to be moving back towards his BOS articles rather his BS Blog rants. Which I'm glad to see. He was sounding liking a childish fanboy. Though I still believe he is a childish fanboy for 2d style game of the arcade nature.

Well 2D arcade gaming is a lot of fun

Nintendo never "disrupted" anything. They created a new market, and they have it practically all to themselves. If they had disrupted something, we'd see traditional gamers flocking to the Wii in droves.. but we don't.

You can't truly claim that HD console adoption hasn't reached previous console levels by itself, due to "Nintendo disruption".  There are a LOT of other factors in play -- namely that the PS2 still is in production, that HDTV adoption was slow, that Blu-Ray adoption was slow, that there's an economic crisis... on and on.  Those factors are significant.  Pretending its all Nintendo's doing is folly.

Actually they did, see disruption doesn't go for the upstream consumers first, it goes for the non-consumers, the downstream and overshot consumers, in fact the core gamers would be the last group targeted.

Except, if all those things are important, Why is the Wii still outselling the PS2's historical sales even though its a recession.

The problem with HD is it overshot the consumers, most consumers don't even know what HD is and don't really care, they bought flat screens because they look nice and can hang on the wall.  Blu-ray is the same, its more than the consumers wanted and so its taking time for it to penetrate.

somebody is a virgin.

and has no friends :P

he has been on a good run of late. Though i believe that Nintendo will fail to rise to the challenge of making a new console that's another total leap in logic. I don't think they have the guts