Alterego-X said:
Acually, it is almost unavoidable. Christensen wrote his disruption books a few years ago, but the pattern of a disruptive innovation taking over existing markets is much older.
Some extreme examples, quoted from Wikipedia's page on disruption: "Though early muskets had less fire rate, range, accuracy and reliability than crossbows and longbows, firearms allowed essentially anyone to become an effective soldier with very little training. Earlier military units like bowmen and knights needed years of practice to master the skills." (so there was a market for primitive muskets, this market allowed upstreaming of the technology, until it was good enough for professional archers, too)
"The first television channels mainly aired news, and began to replace newsreels. As television featured soap operas, animated shorts and other low-budget drama, demand for B movies declined, and concentrated onfeature films with high budget. Pornography is another genre which has gradually moved from the silver screen to home television, as video recorders appeared (mostly since home systems offer more privacy than theaters). Cable and digital encoding has increased the range of television programs. Multiplexes increased cinema's range, at the cost of nearness. Currently, the budgets of Hollywood TV series are closing up on the budgets of feature films. Also, since audio-visual performance of television sets has improved more than movie theaters (as cinema technologies such as Cinemascope, 3D cinema, IMAX, THX have had limited commercial success), the box office mainly survives from the artificial time gap between cinema openings and DVD releases, together with snack sales. "
See, there is not neccessarily a clever corporation behind the event, disruption just happens "naturally", when an innovation catches the custumers with the lowest interest, and it naturally starts evolving. In our case, it is not just Nintendo disrupting the others, it is the combination of the Wiimote, and possibly their more accessible game design, disrupting the HD blockbusters with their huge budgets, and the classic controller. What we saw is the earliest form of motion controls, that might be inferior in case of some upmarket genres, not unlike the first muskets, that were inferior in precise aiming for some time. In theory, the industry could be disrupted without hurting the other companies, if they would adopt to the disruptive innovation on the 0th day. In reality, this is unlikely, because when the disruptor company's dominance in the downmarket becomes obvious, it is already too late for the incumbrent to go downmarket, because the downmarket became a red ocean, where the disruptor is on "home ground". When the disruptor moves upmarket, on the other hand, they have a more profitable strategy, more advanced technology, than the incumbrent.
The HD consoles motion controls are good examples of a counterattack somewhere between the downmarket and the upmarket, (middlemarket?), where they will fail because for them, it is just one of the possibilities to move there, while it is a natural process for the disruptor to go upmarket. If every executive, and even the inverstors of the incrumbents would be visionaries, they could fight for that market, build a huge software lineup for their motion controllers, and bleed money until it will be a red ocean and Nintendo leaves it, but likely they won't. |
I would just like to add that Nintendo isn't the only company who has been involved in disrupting the videogame market, and they are not the first company to be successful with it in recent years ...
Games like The Sims and Guitar Hero are games that were heavily targeted at less interested or non-gamers and were built on a series of values which was very different than what "Hardcore" gamers were looking for. Neither game is particularly "Mature" (in the violent content sense of the term) or has much of a story line, and the games in the series have never (really) focused heavily on producing cutting edge graphics or insane production values. Both games have worked hard at expanding the revenue generated through their customers by increasing the dedication of their consumer base and turning one-time purchases into a constant revenue stream; both do this (primarily) through add-ons and downloadable content, but they have also released several successful sequels. In both cases countless clones have been produced by multiple major publishers but few have been particularly successful; and in the case of Guitar Hero, the only successful competition has come from the company which began the disruption.
The difference between these games and Nintendo's efforts with the Nintendo DS and Wii is that Nintendo's disruption is not focused on a genre or in a small demographic but is a disruption of the entire market and all genres at the same time.
I do wonder whether companies find it so difficult to "Counter Attack" after a disruption because the values the company is built on are incompatible with being successful in the disrupted area of the market. As an example, there is an emphasis on making accessable and fun
experiences on the Wii and DS while there is a greater focus on making something advanced and cool on the PSP and HD consoles. While these concepts may not be diametrically opposed, when you're focused on making a game that is advanced and cool you may (unknowingly) sacrifice the accessability or the "Fun" of the product which makes it less desireable in the new market.
