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Plaupius on 30 August 2008
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Squilliam said:
celine said:

I'm curious. Could you explain beyond the metal illness why do you think that piece lack substance ?

Sure it is in the usual Malstrom style ( that someone can't stand ) but I see a lot of magical market excuse around forums even this forum.

I believe that the problem why certain people couldn't understand Nintendo undeniable recent success isn't the difficult to understand in itself but the lack of the proper mindset to understand ( sorry for repetitions, english isn't my native language ).

PS: I found the reference to Wizard of Oz fantastic

 

Because for someone who seems to think he understands, he actually doesn't.

  1. His posts read like a cross between a get rich quick book and cultist literature. They do not understand, while you the reader understands because you listen to me.
  2. He has a propensity for creating straw man arguments to caricature people like analysts/journalists/publishers/console developers etc and then defeating them.
  3. He is an "intuitive type" but without hard data that analysts have access to, he may as well sit in the lotus position and smoke his bong for all the understanding it will give him of the "market"
  4. His bias is extremely evident in everything he writes. He appears to only accept information that supports his world view. In mathematics class if I get lucky and give the right answer but the method to get that answer was completely wrong, giving the correct answer doesn't matter because I still fail.

 

 

You have some valid points, Malstrom's writing style is, IMO, working against him. But where I disagree with you is the lack of hard data: Malstrom is analyzing business strategy, and for that purpose his articles have plenty of hard data. He also uses the theory of disruption to explain Nintendo's success and the relative failure of the more hardcore industry players in a sound way. His problem is he's labeled people in a disrespectful manner (for example his continuous use of "birdmen"), which inevitably causes a defensive reaction if the reader happens to be one of those people.

About his bias, and this is where I take his word: he's not biased towards Nintendo or against Sony/MS/hardcore, his bias is towards the theory of disruption. While it may be a sound theory, it's not the only one, and I'd hazard a guess that even Nintendo is not following it 100%. Also, I don't think he's understood how digital distribution is disturbing the traditional distribution channels, and what Apple is doing on that front, or how Nintendo's and Sony's and Microsoft's digital distribution models really differ from each other, if there really is a meaningful difference. Actually, there I sense a bias towards Nintendo, but it may be that he thinks it complements the overall strategy of Nintendo whereas Sony and MS have it for another reasons, I don't know. At least with Sony, it's very clear they have a long-reaching strategy in place for digital distribution.