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jarrod on 14 July 2010
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Smashchu2 said:
jarrod said:

Now, you are assuming a lot. Like I said, your arguments aren't based on why my idea are wrong or why yours make more sense than mine, but based on some kind of "common knowledge." This is why you say think like "Nintendo is defending against Apple," or "Microsoft is stalling." (Given, this one is better than before)

I'm not "assuming" anything, I'm laying out what the market conditions are on the ground, and it's rather simple to trace Nintendo's timeline back to that (DS software market bottoming out, piracy rising rapidly, Wii's slow but steady decline, 3rd party exodus).  And I'm saying those are more significant and tangible drivers for 3DS coming this fiscal year (and Wii 2 next I'm predicting) than your "disrupt Sony" theory.  3DS isn't even really disprution, it's direct competition and arguably bit of a spoiler from Sony's perspective.  Disruption theory involves wholly unexpected technologies, I'd argue 3D is the path everyone was eventually headed in a post-Avatar world (that film, if anything, was the real disruptive product), Nintendo's just offering a smarter solution for it.  The only product 3DS may be legitimately disruptive against would actually be non-3D handhelds, like Apple's iPhone 4, which you seem all too eager to swallow Nintendo's PR brush offs about.  3DS isn't disruptive to Sony from a 3D perspective, it's decidedly competitive.  It's actually disruptive towards Apple.

This whole paragraph tells me diosruption is a foriegn concept to you.

  • Disruption IS competing. If the 3DS is competiting, it can also be disrupting.
  • Disruption DOES NOT need to be based on technology. It's the business model.
  • Nintendo's just offering a smarter solution for it. Which is disruption. In that video I posted, he says "doing it better by doing it differently. That is disruption.
  • Again with the Apple. I don't take anyone who mention Apple seriously. There is absolutly no evidence that Nintendo is going after Apple. The only time I've heard them talk about it was to say they were not going after Apple. This is poor reasoning. Stop using it.
  • In order for them to disrupt Apple, Apple has to be overshooting. A disruption to the iPhone would be doing the smartphone differently. The 3DS has no smartphone features, which makes the whole Apple thing even more silly. A disruptive product does something differently, and comes into markets where there is overshooting. The 3DS's main feature is 3D, so, if it is disruptive, it must be trying to do 3D differently. So, it must be disrupting 3D. Sony is going all out on it, so it must be disrupting Sony. This is the only natural conclusion.

Nintendo's whole tack with 3DS against Sony (both at home and on handheld) has been purely competitive and rather direct in drawing comparisons (glassless 3D, low cost, 3rd party deluge).  This is pretty much not at all what we saw with DS or Wii, which were truly disruptive products and most often wouldn't even address competitors.

You're mixing up disruption with Blue Ocean Strategy. Blue Ocean Strategy is avoiding competition and focusing on what consumers want. The DS is not trying to disrupt anything. If it was, it would be trying to disrupt what the PSP is doing, which I have not seen a similarity between the two. Blue Ocean Strategy is about "making the competition irrelevant." The DS just avoids competition. This is also why the DS and PSP can exist in the same market.

Also, comparatively, you didn't see Nintendo move their internal R&D away from GameCube until 2005 really.  We then got Wii in 2006, and just 1 internal project for GC in the interim (Zelda TP).  If the same holds true for Wii (a system with FAR more appeal for Nintendo R&D than 2005-era GameCube) then getting Wii 2 next fiscal year lines up basically perfectly.  Obviously there's going to be a push to 3DS, but that in itself doesn't really explain the sudden vacuum of Wii support from EAD.  There's other indicators for a sooner, rather than later, successor launch as well (slowing support, rising piracy)... again, like Wii followed DS, I think you'll see Wii 2 follow 3DS, and that likely means being first to jump to the next cycle with a concerted effort on (traditionally PlayStation style) 3rd party commitments upfront.

Well that was a mess.

  • Nintendo shifted away from the DS after New Super Mario Bros. and only released Zeldas and other games from their partners and outside developers (like Pokemon). This was 2006
  • Nintendo will put most of their mussel into the 3DS which explains the move entirely. Nintendo is going to put their big games out early to make sure the system has a strong life span. You can attually attribute the Wii's decline to the hiccup of 2008. Had those titles preformed well enough, then the Wii would be doing fine. In fact, notice how, despite little to no third party support for the Wii in 2007 and 2008 that the system declines in 2009. Must not be the support then huh?
  • Piracy would be a terrible reason to dumb a system. Neither the Wii nor the DS have shown great losses from piracy and their games and shoftware still preform well. The DS had piracy for a long time (which Nintendo fought) and they did just make a new DS. The train of though is wrong.
  • Nintendo never reveals their whole hand. Everyone thought there would be a Wii 2 because Nintendo did not have a line up for the latter half of 2010. But then they show it. We only know a few games in 2011, but that doesn't mean those are the only ones.
  • On third party support again: Nintendo this year is getting Just Dance 2, Epic Mickey and Goldeneye, all strong titles. This is more then what they have gotten in the past, showing that support is not a problem.
  • I notice how you keep trying to compair this to the Gamecube and 64. Again, those systems wont follow the same timeline as the Wii as the Wii has preformed well in the market. The N64 and Gamecube were dead on their last years. The Wii probably wont be.


Disruption technology is basically tied to Nintendo's implementation of Blue Ocean strategy.  The touch/dual screens, the Wii remote, and (most importantly) the visionary software implementations for both systems (Nintendogs, Brain-Age, Wii Sports, Wii Fit, etc).  I'd agree though the 3DS isn't really disruptive towards iOS, it's more a defensive measure against possible disruption from the gaming growth markets with iOS.  Disruptive technologies don't compete though, they displace, usually older technologies as well.

You're factually wrong about NCL's post NSMB DS support, as they actually released multiple internally developed or co-developed efforts for it beyond just the 2 Zeldas (Rhythm Heaven, Band Bros. DX, Tomodachi Collection, Wario Ware DIY, PT Cooking, PT Walking, Flipnote Studio, Mario Vs DK 3, tons of DSiWare games/adaptations).  Support certainly slowed as most of the teams shifted towards Wii, but it didn't disappear entirely like we see with the GC/Wii lead in (or indeed with Wii now essentially).  Nintendo always maintains some level of internal support between handheld/console launches, while all Wii has after this year looks like Zelda.  There's not even anything for WiiWare, it's just barren.

I also think you're not giving enough credence to the piracy problem on DS, it's something Iwata (and other industry heads) talk about all the time.  It also probably helps explain the huge drop in software figures for Europe over the past year, which is partially why I think 3DS may launch in Europe before America.  I'd also say it's partially why DSi was introduced, but even that's sort of had a mixed result in curbing piracy.

And in regards to 3rd parties, I was framing it around Japan (and my general argument that Japan's a key reason to launch a Wii successor next fiscal year).  Though there have been a few admitted bright spots there recently (DQMBRV, Inazuma Eleven) but those were likely a long time coming, and the lineup overall is still simply anemic compared to 2009, with no signs of improvement.