| RolStoppable said: This article just reinforces what everyone should already know, that the Wii U won't have a long life. The existence of the QoL platform means that Nintendo has a plan going forward which is more than could be said about the months and years leading up to the Wii U launch. In that sense it's actually a very positive article, not a "Nintendo is doomed" shout. As for entering the crowded health & lifestyle market, people need to think in blue ocean terms. That means a product that creates a new value proposition, thus a comparison with the feature sets of existing products is circumvented. Think Wii; how can Nintendo prevail in the home console market against powerful competitors like Sony and Microsoft, that was the big question before Nintendo unveiled their fifth home console. The Wii created a situation where consumers didn't ask "Wii, PS3 or 360?", but rather "Wii and PS3/360?" or "Wii or nothing". In other words, the Wii couldn't be substituted by any other product. The QoL platform must fall into the same category; and if it does, it won't matter what other companies provide. |
Yep, that strategy, to offer something different from the others (and obviously that users liked), was the biggest HW reason of Wii success, and it worked because it served well the SW, making a new kind of gameplay possible, easy and comfortable, and affordable too (expensive motion control wands already existed for PC, but they were niche or for research purposes). The dumbest things in the article are actually two: suggesting to split the user base with a tabletless version (a smaller and cheaper to build gamepad could be a good solution instead) and the resurrection of Vitality Sensor, that at least in its current form, pinching a fingertip, would be a pain in the arse for both gaming and fitness (but those sensors are currently so cheap that once finding the correct form factor and part of the body to apply it on, it will be simple and not expensive to include as standard equipment in future products, if fitting to their market strategies, so there's just an ergonomics problem to solve).
