Jesse Schell: Xbox, PlayStation and the Innovator's Dilemma

[Mr Khan]

hinch said:

Mr Khan said:

In the PS3's case, it was a clear love letter to the "bigger is better" design mentality embraced by many core gamers: Blu-Ray wasn't just a trojan horse, it had the ability to bring bigger games than anyone had ever dreamed of, and the CELL would be a supercomputer in your console. With the Wii U, it was all the yelling about how Wii was missing out on the third party games because it wasn't HD (when we can see now that the third parties are determined to move their goal-posts) and needed a more normal controller, though enough of Nintendo's design team seemed to understand that was a bad idea, so tried to come up with a concept that could justify a console that was half Wii HD and half proper Wii successor...

Well noone asked for a $599 console. Remember Ken "get a second job to buy a PS3" Kutaragi? The PS3 like the PS1 and PS2 was his vision for Playstation. It was the be and to be-all entertainment system and it had to be cutting edge - from the CPU to the optical drive.

Personally, I don't see a problem with console manufacturers making more of the same and not innovating in the hardware department, because as long as the Software releases and remain new and fresh people will buy them. Hypothetically, if Nintendo released a traditional console without the Wii U pad (or 3D in the 3DS) it would still sell so long as they release Mario, Zelda or Donkey Kong on it, regardless of what innovation is pushed onto us.

The thing with trying to innovate with the sake of innovating is that more times then none it usually falls short of expectations. It could be that the the concept is not compelling enough to convince its audience, or that it was not a good idea in the first place. Moreover, R&D will take longer and will cost more than more proven methods. 

My thoughts were that Sony came to believe that the reason PlayStation sold because of how cool the hardware was (recall that they made a lot of noise about the PS2's power initially), and that they cited the vocal minority who were always drooling over the latest graphics for Sony's more high-end offerings like Gran Turismo, Tourist Trophy, or God of War. Nobody "wanted" a $599 console, but Sony felt they wanted a console that could have bigger and badder games afforded by Blu-Ray and the latest in bleeding-edge graphics tech and a supercomputer-type processor.

In short, Sony both mis-read why they were successful and wanted to play into the superficial factors that cause the most hype amid the gaming community (power and features).