Pacher Explains Why He Predicts WiiHD Believes Will Will Lose MarketShare

[Squilliam]

mai said:

Squilliam said:

The important point Pachter is making is that the Wii is unable to address the entirety of the market. Thats the significant point right there which has prevented the Wii from aquiring > 50% of the market. So whilst it was able to serve many of the underserved/unserved non consumers of the market it failed to address the needs of the entirety of the market and at that it failed to serve the majority of the existing gaming market either if you consider the fact that a proportion of the current Wii userbase is new to gaming.

 

True, as has been mentioned above they're likely to target this portion of the market next gen. At least I believe so.

There're not much choice though, either you move up or down on consumer pyramid (or fight against non-consumers). Some known essential characteristics of Nintendo business model will pervent them from moving really down (especially competing with such extremes as free or very, very cheap games like found in AppStore), so their expansion is to move upmarket.

I don't believe theres any reason why they cannot move in both directions at once with the next generation of consoles. The important point that has to be stated is that they key component to moving in either direction is providing value and cutting the price is only one tool to do that.

Their next console can easily move in both directions at once. They just need to do roughly three relatively obvious things to do so.

1. Increased performance to levels in line with the market expectations. This shouldn't be too hard as they can use off the shelf Fusion parts from AMD for instance which will offer both lower power and higher performance charactaristics which ought to ensure that they can get the full range of current and future generation software from third parties.

2. Further refinements of the key interface technologies. Anything which makes the Wii easier to use or more intuitive or enables improved gameplay possibilities.

3. Embrace the possibilities of the download market, internet, streaming and take a leaf out of Apples book and implement not only a game store but an application store as well. Im sure there would be far fewer hacking attempts if they simply let people make applications for their consoles without resorting to hacking.

Essentially they need to iterate further on basic computing technologies, innovate key improvements in keeping their control system a step ahead of the competition and expand by vastly increasing the possibilities of their system. In a closed console world, openness in itself is once again disruption. I wonder if they dare embrace it?