Alby_da_Wolf said:
I still see it possibly disrupting more the 3D TV business, not the console one. BTW, PS3 became affordable last year and next year it will start approaching popular price, retreating upmarket isn't needed anymore. I'm also sure that Sony doesn't really believe that 3D with glasses could become more than a high end tecnophile niche, waiting for more practical 3D techs to emerge and become affordable. Overshooting isn't a risk as 3D is within current GPU capabilities, it doesn't require expensive HW add-ons on the console side, the problem is only on the display part, glasses-free tech is still viable and affordable only on portables and for single users only, but, as I wrote, consoles are agnostic about display tech, as long as it's stereoscopic, they can use whatever stereoscopic 3D displays users plug them in. As consoles offer a so wide degree of freedom, they don't risk disruption from this side, again the arguments taken indicate more a possible disruption of 3D TV with glasses only. A deserved disruption, I'd add, the fact that many people are willing to use glasses to watch a small subset of the movies they normally watch at the cinema, and obviously for a very limited time, shouldn't have made TV producers believe that it meant that they would have been willing to use them also on home TVs and for more extended times. BTW LG, not Sony, is currently heavily advertising its latest 3D with glasses models and the ads are appalling: to begin with, obviously the ad can't adequately show the tech on 2D TVs, then, when they show the family with those horribly nerdy glasses, they could just have added a caption like "family of dorks". |
this is not how disuption works 
The 3DS can't disrupt the 3D TV business because TV's and the 3DS don't compete over the same audience. As I said the Movie player in the 3DS is to get distant customers not to stop people from buying TV's - or did the PSP compete with normal TVs? No it didn't 
But it can disrupt 3D gaming. You can only disrupt something if you are in the same market / try to sell to the same potential audience. This is like the iPod vs DS argument. The iPod can't disrupt the DS because it is primarily a music player And the 3DS can't disrupt 3DTV because we are talking about TV's and a gaming machine here which serve different pruposes.
Retreating upmarket has nothing to do with price at this point - the console is overshooting because so many games revolve around violence, the games are not family friendly and are complicated and highly competitive. This is why Sony is overshooting the market not because of the price (adults are able to throw out 300$ if they want to). Price is only an issue if it is really high. The PS2 sold buckloads at 300$ and the Wii at 250$. So the price isn't the big reason anymore. But I agree at 600$ they were surely overshooting most of the market.
And they are retreating upmarket they just introduced 3D play! This is like a textbook example of retreating upmarket, really You need to shell out like 10,000$ to play your games in 3D. Now this is a point where price really matters when we're talking overshooting here
And 3D gaming is overshooting. You are a hardcore gamer, right? Do you have a 3D TV? See, that's overshooting Of course you can still play your PS3 without the need to buy a 3DTV. That's not the point. Christensen never argued that the incumbent would suddenly only sell to the highest tier in the market or anything. But Sony is so obviously moving upmarket I bet if you emailed Christensen about this he wouldn't have a doubt. In fact he already talked about Nintendo disrupting Sony.
See the thing here is that you are seeing things from a Sony perspective. This is exactly why disruption is so dangerous to a lot of businesses. They can't see it and when they move upmarket they think "they can't disrupt me here, harharhar". Precisely because you think they are save is why disruption is so dangerous
