1. Actually they failed to hit the entirety of the Blue Ocean or you could say that other competitors got there first. Probably their biggest and best examples of the untapped by Nintendo blue ocean out there is Apple and Facebook. Facebook gaming on a whole is significantly more popular than the Wii, Farmville is more popular than the Wii. Both appear on utility hardware which is PC or iOS based devices and both devices are multiuse. I've said it before but the best way to tap into a non gamer market is to give the non gamer some good non gaming uses for the device first to go along with the gaming uses. You can't sell them a game if you can't sell them the hardware so given the popularity of Farmville and iOS devices I say open things up and throw in a utility browser where people can add functionality. Since these cannot be anticipated, open the console up to the majority of comers.
2. I totally agree. More than half of couples don't have children and the number of people per household has been going down for a while now. I believe it is under 2.0 per household on average or very similar. By the time people have their own console at home they sometimes play, the value of playing it at someone elses house and the novelty of such will go down. Multiplayer is becoming more and more accepted and developers are making more of this online mode.
3. Obviously its something to do with both the controller capabilities and the consoles capabilities. It isn't that they didn't try to make Wii games. It is just that most Wii games they tried to make were complete failures and a lot of the games that came out didn't earn enough money to warrant continued experimentation.
4. You know a movie like Avatar? Titanic? Star Wars? Ben Hur? Gone with the Wind? What is the connection here? Well the former movies tap into blue ocean movie audiences. Nintendo are skilled in attracting them time and again, something which only James Cameron has done in a repeatable fashion.
A.) It depends on the player but it also depends on what is released. It takes a lot better product to get one of these people interested in purchasing a game. Probably they aren't quite as picky around Christmas since they might be actively looking to purchase a game.
B.) More like a hardcore Farmville player nowadays. But yes, Nintendo has to compete against games like Farmville especially for the attention of these people. One could say the rise of Farmville may have dented Wii software sales by a noticeable degree. Microsoft/Sony don't have to try as hard because their gamers actively seek out the games.
C.) Unlikely. Most will continue to play games in some form whether it be a Facebook game, Farmville, Solitaire or something on an iOS device. They will just lapse in interest from playing more complicated games like what Nintendo offers by comparison.
D.) Probably not significantly. The Xbox 360 has a more core audience which is why the spread between the top quartile game and the bottom quartile game isn't as significant as the Wii. This is because of the people who buy 5-10 games per year and sometimes even more tend to be more on these systems. When you buy 5-10 games you cannot be picky and choose only Call of Duty, Fifa and Halo as your 3 games for the year. That means the more niche games get a leg up. The Wii doesn't so the game buying gets clustered around the 1-5 best or most popular releases in the year.
Probably even better as an explanation would be music. Im a very casual listener of music I listen to classic hits on the radio and I haven't bought a song in years. However some people are the opposite, they buy albums/singles in large numbers and they attend concerts and from these people musicians arise to make the music. Without the core/hardcore music listener the variety and health of the music industry would be severely reduced.
5. If they are still selling they haven't been milked out. Arguably the most popular movie of last year was Pocahontis in space. Most people don't care if they've seen the characters before or the plot so long as the way it comes together is still relevant and enjoyable.
6. Nintendo makes the games that noone else likes to make and makes a mint off it. Their failing was in not getting the games they didn't like to make on their system too. If they can rectify that mistake whilst continuing to pursue untapped markets with their own software they can make a killing. The reason why Sony's 'high quality' games don't sell nearly as well as Nintendos is the former has to compete with a huge range of other core software. If things were reversed and third parties made Nintendo style games, Sony would be the one selling 10M or more with Uncharted 2 etc and the tone of what you are writing and the content would be significantly different.
So long as Nintendo rectifies their weaknesses and maintains their strengths then they can maintain their position. If they can figure out a control scheme which is core and uncore friendly whilst perhaps learning the lessons of Farmville and iOS from Apple then they can surely maintain their position as number 1 because they have a significant strength that noone else has, they have the ability and desire to craft games for the most uninterested and difficult customers in the industry.
Tease.
