RolStoppable said:
The nature of the video game industry is that the cycle resets about every five years, so advantages can diminish greatly (this also goes for a purely red ocean; Sony vs. Microsoft in the sixth and seventh gen shows how much can change). The company who started the whole blue ocean thing still enjoys consumer trust, but it needs to act carefully, because the formerly uncontested marketspace turns into a highly competitive field: a red ocean. The SNES is where Nintendo dropped the ball somewhat. While Nintendo did release a Super Tennis and a couple of other sports titles, Sega was able to get a hold of the sports games players over time, because Nintendo didn't seem to care all that much about those gamers. Nintendo also never followed up with a sequel to their launch game Super Mario World (SMW2: Yoshi's Island doesn't count, I hope we don't have to go over this again) while Sega started the Sonic series in 1991 and quickly made sequels. Basically, interest in the Sega Genesis rose because Nintendo didn't release enough games. This shifted the marketshare unfavorably for Nintendo in the fourth generation. Nintendo also didn't really bother anymore to create new blue oceans through additional software, so overall their console sales dropped, also because of a lack of global expansion. Nintendo did more damage to their own sales than Sega. As the PSP shows, a viable competitor entering the market doesn't automatically mean that another company's sales must shrink. |
Going by what you're feeding me, the SNES strategy was a Red Ocean one, since it placed the SNES in a position where its competition became once again relevant.
(I know this doesn't make much sense, but I'm just going with it)
It also begs the question. How much of company direction is strategy, how much is pure consequence to a lack thereof?
