| happydolphin said: RolStoppable, you are cordially invited to a debate with me. (Other users may also post of course!) I want you to answer this little question, and I want to get to the bottom of the Gen 5 failure with you. I've been mulling over it all day and want to get it off my chest. First question. Since the Playstation, a new entry in the market, managed to boot Nintendo off the throne within the Red Market, using Red Market strategy, why did it work? Why did Red Ocean strategy work for Sony, and what did Nintendo do wrong for its Red Ocean strategy to fail? (since they obviously went Red Ocean) For this answer, do not tell me they should have gone Blue Ocean, we'll discuss that as a separate issue, since truth is, the outcome could have been much different even with just a Red Ocean strategy. Ultimately this will lead to many other questions (for later), such as: Is the Blue ocean strategy for gen5 mostly visible in Hindsight? What were the risks involved in going Blue Ocean? Can it fail? (of course the answer is yes) When it fails is it still called blue ocean, or an abomination? What about the risk of losing Red Ocean marketshare by going Blue Ocean? And ultimately, why was the N64 an abomination? Why is it not just a failed Red Ocean attempt? Why was the Cube not just a failed Blue Ocean attempt? (related post @abomination) Rol, feel free to relegate me to your prior posts, but do post the argument related to what I need to look at. |
N64 had a lot to do with Nintendo's own mistakes then Sony's good decisions, firstly it was not an abomination by any means it had games on it that practically define gaming today, PS1 only came to be because it was meant to be a Snes add on but Nintendo didn't want to sign over royalties of every bit of software released on it including their first party titles. N64 arrived 2 years after the PS1 arrived such a headstart would put any company in a strong position and as if Sony's luck couldn't get any better Sega had seriously messed up with the Saturn, the PS1 allowed an alternative for third parties so they jumped aboard, with momentum of an unchallenged 2 year head start and third parties clamouring to get away from Sega and Nintendo it wasn't really the strategy that worked but the situation, Sony just captitalized on it with good marketing.
N64 then stuck with cartridges as their alternative deal with Panasonic didn't come into play fast enough which further pushed third parties away, the market also didn't have overly high development costs so they could stick to one platform as seen with the PS2. The risk in Blue Ocean is that you're trying to capture people who were never into gaming and have to spread your approach to cater to everyone, success in the Blue Ocean approach means that you're bringing in new gamers as well as having a much larger userbase buying your product while failure in it means your product barely takes off and is left behind by the Red Ocean group.
Every approach can fail and in fact the Red Ocean approach has already crashed once before in the 80s however what makes the Blue Ocean more resilient is that it's pulling in new gamers and caters diversely across every group in the market instead of a select group essentially it aims at everyone, for Blue Ocean to eventually fail something very off the wall would have to happen like gaming just comes to a stand still or a new approach is brought out.
