Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology[edit]

The commercial failure of Yokoi's Virtual Boy (1995) eventually led to his departure from Nintendo.

Yokoi articulated his philosophy of "Lateral Thinking of Withered Technology" (枯れた技術の水平思考^?, "Kareta Gijutsu no Suihei Shikō")(also translated as "Lateral Thinking with Seasoned Technology") in the book, Yokoi Gunpei Game House (横井軍平ゲーム館 Yokoi Gunpei Gēmu-kan^?), which consists of a collection of interviews. "Withered technology" in this context refers to a mature technology which is cheap and well understood. "Lateral thinking" refers to finding radical new ways of using such technology. Yokoi held that toys and games do not necessarily require cutting edge technology; novel and fun gameplay are more important. In the interview he suggested that expensive cutting edge technology can get in the way of developing a new product.^[10]

Game & Watch was developed based on this philosophy.^[11] At the time of its development, Sharp and Casio were fiercely competing in the digital calculator market. For this reason, there was a glut of liquid crystal displays and semiconductors. The "lateral thinking" was to find an original and fun use for this cheap and abundant technology. The Game Boy and NES were developed under a similar philosophy.^[12]However, this strategy has not always been successful. When video game consoles entered the 4th and 5th generation, Sony and later Microsoft adopted a strategy of embracing cutting edge technology and selling their console at a loss, which was compensated by the licensing fee from sales of games. Nintendo's failure to adopt compact disc technology instead of cartridges for the Nintendo 64 was cited as the main reason rival PlayStation gained the upper hand in the 5th generation console market.^[13] On the other hand, in the handheld market, Yokoi's refusal to adopt a color display for the Game Boy in favor of long battery life is cited as the main reason it prevailed against Sega's Game Gear and the Atari Lynx.^[12]

Satoru Iwata, the current CEO of Nintendo, claims that this philosophy is still part of Nintendo as it has been passed on to the disciples of Yokoi, such as Miyamoto, and it continues to show itself in Nintendo's current use of technology with the Nintendo DS handheld system and the home gaming console, the Wii.^[14] The Wii's internal technology is mostly the same as the previous game system, the GameCube, and is far behind the computational powers and multimedia versatility of other competing video game consoles in the seventh generation; still being the only one to focus primarily on motion-based controls. Nintendo's emphasis on peripherals for the Wii has also been pointed to as an example of Yokoi's "lateral thinking" at work.^[15] The DS uses ARM processors at relatively low clock speeds and has far less computational power compared to Sony's competingPSP, yet has many features of modern technology built in (such as 802.11b, compatibility with Game Boy Advance games and touchscreen functionality).

I just though it would be interesting putting this out there. It's been said many times, but I honestly haven't seen so much information on Nintendo's hardware strategy before. 

This was taken from the Gunpei Yokoi wikipedia page. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpei_Yokoi#Lateral_Thinking_with_Withered_Technology

It works. Until it doesn't.

True, but then again that literally applies to everything.

When has it not worked? It worked remarkably well with everything Yokoi has ever done for Nintendo excluding the Virutal Boy which launched against his wishes well before it was ready.  

I also heard it a few times when they were explaining the Wii and DS. Seems like the only times it doesn't work is when Nintendo doesn't want to use it.  

Its too bad when it doesn't work out since Nintendo seems to be the one that tries to go out of the norm to give us "new" experiences but to be fair, its usually their fault for doing that too but doing terrible ads, not showing up at e3 as well as other mistakes

I do hope they continue to find interesting ways on how we play video games, just with better execution

It worked, but not for Virtual Boy. Now it seems Wii U might not work as they had previously expected.

Hard to argue the Wii U is using "withered" technology though. The consumer's impression of the results may not impress, but there's some pretty impressive  tech behind the Gamepad, specifically its latency-free streaming, which Nintendo developed and finished only the Summer prior to launch.

Which reinforces Yokoi's philosophy, in my opinion.

Game & Watch was developed based on this philosophy.[11] At the time of its development, Sharp and Casio were fiercely competing in the digital calculator market. For this reason, there was a glut of liquid crystal displays and semiconductors. The "lateral thinking" was to find an original and fun use for this cheap and abundant technology. 

While the tech inside the Wii U isn't as up to date as the PS4 and Xbox One the gamepad tech is more than impressive, not to mention rather costly, and goes againt Gunpei Yokoi's thinking.

The VB wasn't supposed to launch when it did. Gunpei Yokoi said this himself. But because Nintendo dodn't want it to ruin sales of the N64 they put it in the market way too early. There was no software support, and the device wasn't finished.

Not to mention that the VB didn't really follow this philosophy, it was expensive tech at the time. I see that Noname already talked about the rest here. 

It's an interesting philosophy when trying to compete in the tech world. It's worked well more than a handful of times.
In a way sort of relevant to this philosophy, even though it was technically inferior to everything else on the market, the 16 bit SNES continued to flourish in the 32 bit era under the influence of games like DKC. Heck SNES even launched well after its main 16 bit competitor.

I don't know about its relevancy anymore, though.