What are the business lessons from the 360/PS3/Wii generation?

[aavidbacon]

Well, Innovation matters, since thds and wii lead are mainly beacause of that. If you take out the wiimote you have a xbox, plain and simple, while the ds is a gba with dual screen and touch screen. They are Colombus eggs, once made, it´s simple, but the move itself is genius.

Price matters. Don´t need to explain

Games matters, since x360 wouldn´t be around without the aggressive MS strategy of buying PS3 exclusives. Nintendo survived last two gens because of it´s games, like zelda and Mario. So next gen need great investment on new great games, in the first two years preferably, otherwise the custumer makes the jump towards other system.

Reliability matters. Ps3 wouldn´t be were it is without RRoD. Ninty always had a reputation of reliable consoles, so the custumer nows were he stands.

Give options to the custumer. The X360 is not $200 cheaper than PS3, because there´s lots of ad ons, like coolers and net cabbles, but it gives the perception of being cheaper by having different skus. PS3 could benifit of a cheaper Sku without some stuff like BC and other more expensive with everything. Now there´s only one very expensive sku the 80 gb, with the 160gb comming. The wii was always cheap.

And that´s it. It´s a litle biased towards ps3, but we have to agree it was the biggest business failure this gen, compared with the expectations, while the wii was a big success and the x360 was more successful than it´s predecessor.