The funny thing is, Nintendo's strategy didn't work before. For two hardware generations in a row, in fact. Certainly they never ended up short for cash, but look at the gross difference in success between N64, GameCube and Wii. Whereas Sony's strategy did work for those same two generations. What can we learn from this?
What I learned from it is that there's more to process than just business model. There's also the product you're applying the model to. In Sony and Microsoft's models, all you need to succeed is a lot of starting capital and no market disruption. In Nintendo's model, the key thing necessary to succeed is the invention of the very disruption that Sony and Microsoft's models abhor. And if you look closely, you can see Nintendo was trying to cause that disruption with the N64 and GameCube too. They didn't work, but the effect is clear.
Take a look at the N64 controller, and how it's designed. You might start to spot some curious similarities to the Wii Remote: two grip styles with one in legacy controller format (middle/right grip or left/right grip; Wiimote can be held vertically or horizontally), a form-factor trigger on the new grip (Z on N64 controller, B on Wiimote), an expansion port for add-ons, and a new control feature (analog and eventually Rumble Pak for N64, motion control and IR camera for Wiimote). When you look at it, the two were aiming at the exact same goal: to disrupt how people played games.
So why didn't the N64 controller work, but the Wii Remote did? Two reasons:
1. The feature that set the N64 controller apart was easily shoehorned onto the old controller style
2. The controller was not user-intuitive
The first point was devestating on its own, because it meant their advantage was not only nullified, but turned into a shortcoming (Sony doubled the analog stick count on the Dual Analog, and then doubled the rumble motor count after the Rumble Pak came out with the DualShock). As for the second point... What's the first question anybody asks when presented with an N64 controller? "How do I hold this?" And if it were user-intuitive, the answer would be "Exactly how you'd think you hold it." That makes no sense for the N64; you'd need a third arm to do that.
The GameCube controller tried something very similar, but it was closer to why the Wii Remote is successful (paradoxically enough, given the GameCube controller is so standard). It rearranged the face buttons in a way that could not readily be replicated on other gamepads. Most games on PlayStation and XBOX platforms rely on the button layout being the standard "4 same-sized face buttons", so switching to a "central button with 3 orbiting buttons" format would not be appreciated. But the problem there was, while it was relatively user-friendly, it was not developer-friendly at all. It was an innovation, in short, that brought nothing truly new to the table.
So let's hear some more theories and ideas on why the plans work and don't work.
Sky Render - Sanity is for the weak.
