| Helios said: WereKitten: I don't necessarily disagree with you in this matter, but would you be so kind as to answer me 1) what evidence you have that the Wii has not, as you say, created a new market, and is instead filling out the holes left in the old one (given that, IIRC, Nintendo has already produced statistics that would indicate otherwise), and 2) how, exactly, you mean to adduce that the Wii and its innovative (for home consoles) interface has not disrupted the market, when earlier in this very thread you were saying it will not be long for the HD systems to follow? Even if it is, in fact, only a subset of the old market that is being exploited by these new methods of control*, it is still a change that would not have occurred if it were not for Nintendo's strategizing. Of course, this change, in reality, has taken place during a period of time, beginning with the DS, and so it does not fall into the same trap as Malstrom's argument. *I trust you will not deny the import of Wii Sport's control scheme in the popularization of the Wii. I believe this to be a reasonable inquiry, and I look forward to your rebuttal. PS. Yes, I was being intentionally haughty in this post. Humor me. |
You'll have to indulge me, in that I have no background in business studies, thus I could be improperly using terms that have a very strict meaning and causing undue confusion. Improperly put, long text follows :)
1) I suppose you could say that they "created" their new market, indeed, as in tapping into a market that was probably almost untouched since the days of Pong or the very first home consoles, before they became intimidating for most people. I didn't say that Nintendo filled out holes in an old market, merely that the two HD consoles moved towards a different battleground.
Looking at the PS2 library with its Buzz and Singstar and Guitar Hero, plus the plethora of kiddy tie-ins one could have thought that in an alternate timeline the PS2->PS3 transition might have been designed to be more inclusive of the casually-playing users. But the war with MS and the dawning market of digital media content required focusing elsewhere.
2) Proper market disruption would mean that the novelty popularized by Nintendo can't be fully pursued by Sony or MS because of their business model. And thus that it will always give Nintendo an edge as it gnaws the market from under their feet, up to the point where all gamers' needs are fulfilled by a new and different evolving line of products.
I just say that it's not a given for several reasons.
The first is that nobody knows what will happen when that new market becomes a battlefield, or how the newly found focus on casual users (I don't like the term much, but it's not at all derogatory in my mind) by Sony and MS will turn out. How much will brand loyalty count for such users? What will happen if Sony or MS start marketing their family friendly offer, maybe pointing out their peculiarities over Nintendo's offer (games or family activities that involve the camera?) How much will the MotionPlus succeed? I don't think that we can say that they can't pursue the same road a priori.
The second is that even if Sony and MS were unable to make inroads into this market, I still have to see any indication that the "new" gaming can grow to fulfill all existing needs of the gamers' base. This is not the same as talking about the controls, mind you. GTA V could be coded with beautiful, effective motion controls and still be quite the opposite of the "new" gaming as Malstrom identifies it (less complicated games, low initial entrance barrier, intuitive interaction).
One thing is to say "quiet and sturdy solid-state HDDs will eventually get cheaper and bigger enough to disrupt the rotating, magnetic HDD market". You only have to become good enough in all the relevant specs (say cost per gigabyte), while keeping the properties that give you an irreplaceable edge over the old product (say resistance to mechanical stress). At that point you fulfill the needs of the market.
But the same can't be blindly extended to contents such as movies, music, literature or games. There's no such thing as "being a good enough poetry" if your added value is a simplified language. To write some poetry, that value will actually be a hinderance.
In all of this, please note that I'm not downplaying the great success of Nintendo, nor the freshness of the motion controls they introduced at the heart of their platform. I'm just asking for more evidence that this is truly a disruptive process of the whole console gaming as we know it, and not simply an expansion and re-adjustment of focus that will end up in a different but not revolutionized balance.
PS: haughty? English is not my first language, thank god, thus such undertones zoom over my head all the time :)
