| dharh said: ^ First, console wars are muddled. A great number of console owners are in fact duel console owners. I have all 3. Taking away a significant part of Nintendo's audience basically means "Oh by the way you Wii owners should get a PS3/X360 also cause we have something you like that Nintendo doesn't offer." You may entirely be right that Nintendo's current 'upmarket' as you put it strategy will block SONY/MS 'downmarket' strategy. I don't really see it quite so black and white, but ok.
You guys and your blue ocean analogy. The Good Enough strategy IS a way to create a disruptive tech. I don't think its the exact same as Nintendo's Blue Ocean but it sort of does compare. The Wii has Good Enough performance, its above the GC but can't match the other consoles of the gen, but a large significant segment of the gaming population are fine with it (maybe even prefer it, far as I can tell). It made the Wii cheapest to buy out the gate. Motion controls are simple enough and intuitive its easy to become efficient in controlling whatever game uses it. This allowed people to play games that had never done so before (this is by the way the blue ocean strategy, get new gamers). The controls are Good Enough for alot of people for alot of games, but not all people and not all games. Look at the Flip camera. It does nothing new at all, all it does is focus on the KEY elements of a digital camera, make it intuitive to use, cheep to buy. It completely disrupted the digital camera market. |
I think, that you are mixing the Blue Ocean Strategy, and the Disruption Strategy (and also made up your own "Good Enough Strategy" WTF?!)
These are both existing, well defined strategies from business professionals. The former means, in short, non-competition and exploring new markets.
The latter is a much more complex process, and while it DOES begin with finding a blue ocean of downmarket users, you make it sound like if that would be all, and the two markets could peacefully live near each other. But that is wrong.
That graph I quoted, was used by Clayton Christensen, the writer of the Disruption books. Upstreaming IS a vital part of the disruption, not just "a possibility". If a company would simply find an underserved niche, it would not disrupt anyone else by serving them. The disruption happens when the disruptor kicks the previous market leader in the groins, and destroying them, hence the name "disruption". Even if Nintendo would be unaware of the Disruption Strategy that they started,( but they are aware), they would upstream. Every company, every product is upstreaming. It is the natural thing to do. (The first step, that indeed uses the KISS principle, is more like the anomaly, this is why disruptions are rarely started.) Starting the disruption is the "revolution", while the usual business process is an "evolution", (including the continuing of the disruption).
That's the whole point. While now motion controllers are only "good enough" for the downmarket, they will natually evolve, until they are good enough for the upmarket. And when they are going to evolve, Nintendo will be in the front line.
If the console war would be a real battle, Nintendo would put itself on the high ground, from where they can attack to downhill swiftly and powerfully, while the enemy attackers woud be slowed down, an tired while charging uphill. (this high ground also happens to be called the "downmarket", so yes, my analogy sucks from that perspective)
