Nintendo: Too Big to Fail?

[Psyberius]

happydolphin said:

Psyberius said:

I hate to say it but other than some nasty shots at the original poster who has posted some decent points, i'm not seeing much in the way of rebuttals other than fanboi WII hate attacks.

Nintendo was successful with WII on a number of fronts...innovation, pricepoint and some damn good strategic positioning.  They also relied on an emerging market of a somewhat more casual gamer that really didn't exist before.

If you look at those points, Nintendo will certainly bring more of the same however I cannot envision a situation where either of the other 2 are going to get caught with their pants down like they did with WII.

When I think about the casual gamer aspect that was critical for a ton of their success, I suspect that that market is at least partially saturated...for ANY other console to break into and dislodge the WII from a household that isn't going to really care about tablets and flashy graphics and all that.  They really didn't care about flashy graphics and high end technology during the current generation, why would they care about it going forward.   Lets remember that a crapton of people went out and grabbed WII's because it was the THING to have for a couple Christmases.  Those people didn't really buy a console based on a perceived need...they wanted it because everyone else wanted it.  There are a TON of those WII's that rarely get turned on now...

I do not see the next generation blowing out the same numbers at this generation did....at least not initially.  Many people stepped into the console market in curiousity.  I do not see thsoe same people being interested in upgrading.  I see things picking up or staying stable as more and more people replace their TV's with HD and go to streaming at their TVs with a console.

I just don't see ANY console cracking its way into a number of homes the WII opened up.  Without a vastly more interesting product that tugged on peoples heart strings like the WII did, Nintendo cannot possibly rape and pillage like they did.  Most scary for them is that they must enter the space that Sony and Microsoft are making their bread and butter in...the HD market.  It's going to be awefully difficult for them to separate themselves from the other two in a market that has already existed and already been beaten to death over the last 6 years.

 

Lastly and very importantly...price point.  Without taking an absolute bath, the Wii U is not going to be $199.00.  I suspect it'll be hard to make the $299.00 price point...at least initially.   Say what you will however the $199 pricepoint was instrumental in MILLIONS of sales for Nintendo.  For people on a tight budget it was an absolute no brainer...crazy fun console, couple hundred bucks, nice and compact, simple to use...frig why buy anything else.  Price point is huge for some people.  The 3DS is a different beast....its hard to make that price and do more than an incremental upgrade to your existing machine.  Now people who look at the 3DS point to the fact that people are slurping them up faster than a drunk at an open bar however the handheld market is a much more zealous environment than that which the WII owned.  There a a TON of WII owners that wouldn't bother to spell zealous when it comes to the dust gathering addition to their entertainment system...let alone be that.

Nintendo must differentiate themselves from Sony and Microsoft if they want to enjoy the same success they had with Wii.  Unfortunately, the only way they can justify an update is going to take them into the teeth of why people bought PS3 and Xboxes.

Good post. Question: In your eyes, why did people by DS's? Why did people buy gameboys, why GBA's? What about that market, is it possible that Nintendo may be wanting to tap into that market more than anything with this dual-screen design?

Food for thought.

Question 2: Can Nintendo foster its own niche market in parallel with Sony's and Microsoft's? If Nintendo was able to do so on the handhelds, can't they do it on a home console?

LOL...the guy at the top has only one way to go...Honestly it's inevitable for everyone who leads something has to fall to someone else.  There are very very few things in technology with a leader that hasn't fallen and often those leaders fall into obscurity. I don't see them going anywhere now with the 3DS being eaten up like a fatkid with chocolate cake.  Nintendo was surprised with the WII's success...they(and everyone else who bothers to be honest with themselves) had no frigging idea it was going to do what it did.  Those types of things are hard to follow.  

Sidestory: remember the tech boom #1...a friend worked at a place that was upgrading so quickly that they would bring in pallets of new printers or cpus or monitors for people to use and people would just grab them on the way in on the morning of upgrades.  Zero control at all...things were moving that quickly and they were making so much money they really didn't care. Scary and I bet Nintendo has  bit of that...it's IMPOSSIBLE to manage that kind of growth.  There also is undoubtably a lot of fat sitting on the underside of Nintendo now...it always happens in these cases when money is there to burn...and fat causes feckups. 

Well I don't have the growth sheet for all types of game hardware however I suspect that the market has been growing steadily since the days of atari/commodore 64(lol everyone points to the atari as the only game platform of its time however I can assure you that the C-64 was only a game platform for many of us...mmm 8 bit.  That growth WILL top out at some point.  You aren't going to see deep penetration into a senior citizen market for instance...they're trying to get the rest of their lives in...gaming generally isn't part of that.  :)  So when that max out happens, I think it's going to happen hardcore.  

 

We've seen how people have been throwing their hardware away for the newest and greatest...ask yourself...how much better can a console get than what we have?  We saw a MASSIVE jump in tech with the WII/360 and PS3...I do not think that it's possible to have that jump any more.  How much better can graphics look?  How much more fluid?  How much better can an interface get?  What ELSE can they do.  I am not one of those people who are going to buy a new ps3 or 360 or WII if they have x more framerate or a slightly different platform.  What's the point?  I pay for VALUE and there's no value in a small incremental update.

The PC market is there now.  Are you going to be able to load that spreadsheet any faster with an 8 core cpu and 16 gigs of ram?  Really?  The justification is dying for PC upgrades because there's really no value in them except for high high end gamers.  People have those 1 or 2 computers for their house and they aren't going to need something until they die.   I see that potentially happening to consoles.

If anything the games are going to drive the upgrades more than ever...but ask yourself how close that envelope is the the ceiling...people are saying that neither the ps3 nor the 360 are at their full potential now...how much potential of use of that hardware is going to be realized in a new console...10-20 percent?  I think people are going to start to lose the stary eyed-gotta-have-it mentality if they look at once screen and see just a tiny bit difference over the other.  HD is HD...3D is annoying in its current form and *sigh* yes it is 3D.  There is also a point where the human eye is unable to detect a noticable difference from one picture to the other.   And there is the rub...exclusives are starting to get very very tiny updates and their numbers are shrinking...no game maker wants their product sitting on just a WII or a 360 or PS3 when there is sooo much more market on all 3.  So where is that going to leave new hardware sales?

 

Sorry for another book...lol....i'll shut up now.