1.First, Microsoft only cared about the new market in 2009, almost 3 years since it was formed with the Wii. if they actually cared, we would have seen something in 2007 and 2008. Their other E3 press conferences and actions do not align with the expanded market.

2. The fire is breaking out iver Kinect. A lot of XBox fans are ferious over Kinect. Sony has motion controls too, but they did not have the sheer outrage that Microsoft fans did over Microsoft's conference. Here is an example:

To say I was disappointed with Kinect would be putting it mildly. After waiting at the Galen Center for a couple of hours, other than the name, Kinect, nothing was revealed except a handful of pre-recorded demos where actors clearly pretended to control the on-screen characters (avatars) with their own body movement. At several points the avatars would move before the actors did, ruining the illusion of a real live demo of Kinect. This body-synch debacle makes Milli Vanilli’s legendary lip-synch outrage look tame by comparison.

I did not see the anger here, but I definatly saw it at other forums (like NeoGAF). Microsoft fans are not happy. Nintendo never got any flack for their motion controls at E3 06. Sony didn't either with Move. Yet, everyone hated Microsoft's conference. It is a sign of things to come. This will explain it better.

@thismeintiel: Scott Anthony is a co-author for the disruption books. He also runs a firm that helps companies with disruptive ideas. If he says the Wii Remote is a disruption, it is. No argument.

EDIT: You are trying to over apply disruption. A disruptive innovation is doing it different. A sustaining innovation in gaming would be better graphics. A disruptive innovation would be motion controls.

I'm looking at the numbers. The Wii was going has been going down every year since 2007. Now, Iwata has probably talked about it before (I have not see anything myself), but the solution would not be "let's give up on the Wii and release a new console." Their solution would be to make more software, as it has always been. The Wii is also up YoY in May in the US and had it's strongest Christmas in 2009. It is doing very well. Why kill it now. "But the 3DS!" The DS lasted for 6 years from 2004 to 2010. The Wii will have only 5 years on the market despite it is a very successful console and there is no competition. Not to mention that Europe as an economy is crashing, so a system in 2011 will not be good.

Your reasonings for 2011 are not based on the current market happenings. What is going on is disruption. They are not releasing a new DS because it might make more money, They are doing it to disrupt 3D. Notice how Nintendo talked about "No more glasses," where Sony was all about them. It's not about making more money, it's about destroying Sony. They also launched the Wii right next to the PS3 and announced their price cut during Sony's TGS. The 360 was at $200 for a while and they only lower it aftre Sony's machine is $300. The name of the game is disruption and Nintendo is disrupting Sony. The Wii2 will only launch as a response to what they think Sony will do or if they have some controller or feature that will change the market. Otherwise, it makes little sense that a system is coming in 2011. Let's n ot forget the Wii came in 2006 and the DS in 2004, four years apart.

Microsoft is definatly not stalling. They have never been interested in the expanded audience, so why start now? They are a shooter console, not a fitness one. It's to stop Nintendo. Natal is (or was) possitioned to stop Nintendo's disruption. The reason they will leave Microsoft is because a fire broke out in their core market. Scott Anthony talks about it here. The fire broke out and Microsoft has to put it out. Seeing as Microsoft is incompitent, it will fail and Microsoft will not bounce back.

jarrod said:

[...]

And I think you misunderstood my use of "stall tactic" in regards to Microsoft.  They're using Kinect to try and artificially lengthen the natural generational cycle make a better return off the platform, that's what I meant by "stall".  Stall the cycle.  Sony's doing the same with Move, and interestingly this was also the original plan Nintendo had for the Wii remote (which was going to be Gamecube peripheral).

Nintendo has been making more Wii software, they had a giant initiative last year with three 10 million plus sellers and Wii's first price drop, and while that's helped, it hasn't really helped Wii regain it's previous foothold.  The problem is chiefly 3rd party content, and at this point Nintendo doesn't seem able to attract much new support after the high profile mixed 3rd party results last year (Monster Hunter, Taiko no Tatsujin and Momotaru Denetsu did great, FFCC, Tales and Sengoku Musou did... not so great).  It's not like there's this sudden decision to "give up" Wii, but they've been trying for awhile and they can't seem to really turn it around. More telling is that NCL's internal R&D has shifted almost wholesale to 3DS, leaving only two announced Wii projects on their table (Metroid this summer and Zelda next spring), you don't exactly have to adept at reading tea leaves to predict Nintendo's moving away from Wii, and really has been headed this direction for awhile.

I think you're misusing the concept of disruption (no, Wii's price drop was not "disruption", it was competitive, which isn't quite the same thing), and you're sort of missing that Nintendo's widened their net since the initial disruption strategies of 2004-2006.  3DS isn't so much a response to PS3/3DTV, which is what you're essentially painting is as.  The 3DS push combines several factors and competitive strategies really, and has multiple aims and looks to be a protective measure for Nintendo from a variety of competitors (from iPhone to PlayStation).  The development timeline alone though sort of gives away that 3DS isn't nearly as centered around Sony as you seem to imply here, as active work on the platform as is dates back to 2007/2008. The reason they're rushing 3DS now though, so soon after DSi, is pretty obviously due to software sales waning in Japan, and bottoming out in Europe.  Piracy's basically taken over the mainstream on DS, near everyone's spoken about it at length, and Nintendo's looking to get revenues back up to growth again.  If not for the alarming uptake in DS piracy, I honestly doubt we'd be seeing 3DS this year.

Also, DS and Wii were 2 years apart, not 4.  GBA and GC however even launched in the same year, and SFC was just a year and a half after GB, so it's not like Nintendo's uncomfortable with closer aligned console and handheld launches.  5 years would give Wii the same primary lifecycle as the two Nintendo consoles before it (and the planned SFC cycle, it got an extra year due to N64 delays).

And I think you misunderstood my use of "stall tactic" in regards to Microsoft.  They're using Kinect to try and artificially lengthen the natural generational cycle make a better return off the platform, that's what I meant by "stall".  Stall the cycle.  Sony's doing the same with Move, and interestingly this was also the original plan Nintendo had for the Wii remote (which was going to be Gamecube peripheral).

The problem is rather than saying why my point are wrong or why you're are a better fit, you assume you'res are the only ones and run with it. They sound silly as a result.

On Wii software: two of the three big hitters last year were sequals, which would not move systems. New Super Mario Bros Wii, however, did push systems, where it sold 4 million Wiis in a month's time. The last big seller that would move systems since NSMBWii was Wii Fit back in May of 2008 (and November 2008 in Japan). You can see the gap there. The problem has been a lack of software that would move the system. Sequals don't help. And Nintendo's 2008 holiday line up was a bust.

Also, the reason Nintendo might be moving away from the Wii is because they are about to launch the 3DS, which is obviously going to get most of the development support like any new system should. This, however, does not mean they are just going to make a new home console. They won't even be ready to focus on it for a while.

Disruption: No surprise, you mis-applied disruption. None of what you said makes sense if we consider Nintendo is using disruption on their systems. What does piracy and decline sales in Japan have to do with disruption? Why would Nintendo, a disruptor, defend themselves from competitors who are over shooting. And WHY do people keep saying they are respond, or doing anything, in reaction to Apple. Nintendo, themselves, have come out and said they are not focusing on Apple and if they did, it was false. Reggie stopped an interview at E3 for just that. They are not focused on Apple and nothing they have done implies that.

If you do not see the 3DS as a disruption, then you don't understand disruption. 3D is obviously overshooting the market. So what happens when overshooting takes place? A disruptor comes in, of course. To show Nintendo is disrupting

• Nintendo constantly said "No more glasses." This means they are doing it different, rather than doing it better. This is the cornerstone of disruptive innovations
• Nintendo mentioned a lot of problems with 3D. All of these were overshooting. Nintendo is saying "3D is not what you want. So have different 3D instead."
• Nintendo has movies on the 3DS. Why the heck does Nintendo have movies on the 3DS. They never cared about this before?
• Nintendo showed a video detailing the history of 3D in cinema. Nintendo is not a movie company, so why did it end with the 3DS?
• Sony, at their conference, mentions "true 3D experience." Sound like 2007?

DS and Wii were 2 years apart: The N64 and the Gamecube are not compairable here. Both systems did not excell on the market, so naturally, they would have a short lifespan. The last years of the systems were dead years. The lifespan of a system is dependent on it's strength on the market. The Playstation systems have had long life spans because they were successful. This is why the Wii having only 5 years is silly. I have yet to hear a strong reason why Nintendo will launch in 2011 and why it's a good idea they should.

360 stall:This is where you assume your answer is right and that there isn;t another one. You're assuming it's a stall tactic, but there is no evidence of it. Microsoft and Sony both only started caring about the new market in 2009, almost 3 years since the Wii was on the market. Also, they have pushed their systems as "Hardcore machines." So why is grandma all of a sudden a priority? There is no reason to think it's a stall tactic any more then to think a magical fairy flew into their offices and gave them 10 million hamburgers if they made motion controls.

Them responding to a disruptor makes sense because this is why incumbents do. They ignore the disruptor until it is too late and fire back a counter attack that usually fails. Since Nintendo is a disruptor, it makes the most sense that they are protecting their market space.

Now, you are assuming a lot. Like I said, your arguments aren't based on why my idea are wrong or why yours make more sense than mine, but based on some kind of "common knowledge." This is why you say think like "Nintendo is defending against Apple," or "Microsoft is stalling." (Given, this one is better than before)

I'm not "assuming" anything, I'm laying out what the market conditions are on the ground, and it's rather simple to trace Nintendo's timeline back to that (DS software market bottoming out, piracy rising rapidly, Wii's slow but steady decline, 3rd party exodus).  And I'm saying those are more significant and tangible drivers for 3DS coming this fiscal year (and Wii 2 next I'm predicting) than your "disrupt Sony" theory.  3DS isn't even really disprution, it's direct competition and arguably bit of a spoiler from Sony's perspective.  Disruption theory involves wholly unexpected technologies, I'd argue 3D is the path everyone was eventually headed in a post-Avatar world (that film, if anything, was the real disruptive product), Nintendo's just offering a smarter solution for it.  The only product 3DS may be legitimately disruptive against would actually be non-3D handhelds, like Apple's iPhone 4, which you seem all too eager to swallow Nintendo's PR brush offs about.  3DS isn't disruptive to Sony from a 3D perspective, it's decidedly competitive.  It's actually disruptive towards Apple.

This whole paragraph tells me diosruption is a foriegn concept to you.

• Disruption IS competing. If the 3DS is competiting, it can also be disrupting.
• Disruption DOES NOT need to be based on technology. It's the business model.
• Nintendo's just offering a smarter solution for it. Which is disruption. In that video I posted, he says "doing it better by doing it differently. That is disruption.
• Again with the Apple. I don't take anyone who mention Apple seriously. There is absolutly no evidence that Nintendo is going after Apple. The only time I've heard them talk about it was to say they were not going after Apple. This is poor reasoning. Stop using it.
• In order for them to disrupt Apple, Apple has to be overshooting. A disruption to the iPhone would be doing the smartphone differently. The 3DS has no smartphone features, which makes the whole Apple thing even more silly. A disruptive product does something differently, and comes into markets where there is overshooting. The 3DS's main feature is 3D, so, if it is disruptive, it must be trying to do 3D differently. So, it must be disrupting 3D. Sony is going all out on it, so it must be disrupting Sony. This is the only natural conclusion.

Nintendo's whole tack with 3DS against Sony (both at home and on handheld) has been purely competitive and rather direct in drawing comparisons (glassless 3D, low cost, 3rd party deluge).  This is pretty much not at all what we saw with DS or Wii, which were truly disruptive products and most often wouldn't even address competitors.

You're mixing up disruption with Blue Ocean Strategy. Blue Ocean Strategy is avoiding competition and focusing on what consumers want. The DS is not trying to disrupt anything. If it was, it would be trying to disrupt what the PSP is doing, which I have not seen a similarity between the two. Blue Ocean Strategy is about "making the competition irrelevant." The DS just avoids competition. This is also why the DS and PSP can exist in the same market.

Also, comparatively, you didn't see Nintendo move their internal R&D away from GameCube until 2005 really.  We then got Wii in 2006, and just 1 internal project for GC in the interim (Zelda TP).  If the same holds true for Wii (a system with FAR more appeal for Nintendo R&D than 2005-era GameCube) then getting Wii 2 next fiscal year lines up basically perfectly.  Obviously there's going to be a push to 3DS, but that in itself doesn't really explain the sudden vacuum of Wii support from EAD.  There's other indicators for a sooner, rather than later, successor launch as well (slowing support, rising piracy)... again, like Wii followed DS, I think you'll see Wii 2 follow 3DS, and that likely means being first to jump to the next cycle with a concerted effort on (traditionally PlayStation style) 3rd party commitments upfront.

Well that was a mess.

• Nintendo shifted away from the DS after New Super Mario Bros. and only released Zeldas and other games from their partners and outside developers (like Pokemon). This was 2006
• Nintendo will put most of their mussel into the 3DS which explains the move entirely. Nintendo is going to put their big games out early to make sure the system has a strong life span. You can attually attribute the Wii's decline to the hiccup of 2008. Had those titles preformed well enough, then the Wii would be doing fine. In fact, notice how, despite little to no third party support for the Wii in 2007 and 2008 that the system declines in 2009. Must not be the support then huh?
• Piracy would be a terrible reason to dumb a system. Neither the Wii nor the DS have shown great losses from piracy and their games and shoftware still preform well. The DS had piracy for a long time (which Nintendo fought) and they did just make a new DS. The train of though is wrong.
• Nintendo never reveals their whole hand. Everyone thought there would be a Wii 2 because Nintendo did not have a line up for the latter half of 2010. But then they show it. We only know a few games in 2011, but that doesn't mean those are the only ones.
• On third party support again: Nintendo this year is getting Just Dance 2, Epic Mickey and Goldeneye, all strong titles. This is more then what they have gotten in the past, showing that support is not a problem.
• I notice how you keep trying to compair this to the Gamecube and 64. Again, those systems wont follow the same timeline as the Wii as the Wii has preformed well in the market. The N64 and Gamecube were dead on their last years. The Wii probably wont be.

Now, you are assuming a lot. Like I said, your arguments aren't based on why my idea are wrong or why yours make more sense than mine, but based on some kind of "common knowledge." This is why you say think like "Nintendo is defending against Apple," or "Microsoft is stalling." (Given, this one is better than before)

I'm not "assuming" anything, I'm laying out what the market conditions are on the ground, and it's rather simple to trace Nintendo's timeline back to that (DS software market bottoming out, piracy rising rapidly, Wii's slow but steady decline, 3rd party exodus).  And I'm saying those are more significant and tangible drivers for 3DS coming this fiscal year (and Wii 2 next I'm predicting) than your "disrupt Sony" theory.  3DS isn't even really disprution, it's direct competition and arguably bit of a spoiler from Sony's perspective.  Disruption theory involves wholly unexpected technologies, I'd argue 3D is the path everyone was eventually headed in a post-Avatar world (that film, if anything, was the real disruptive product), Nintendo's just offering a smarter solution for it.  The only product 3DS may be legitimately disruptive against would actually be non-3D handhelds, like Apple's iPhone 4, which you seem all too eager to swallow Nintendo's PR brush offs about.  3DS isn't disruptive to Sony from a 3D perspective, it's decidedly competitive.  It's actually disruptive towards Apple.

This whole paragraph tells me diosruption is a foriegn concept to you.

• Disruption IS competing. If the 3DS is competiting, it can also be disrupting.
• Disruption DOES NOT need to be based on technology. It's the business model.
• Nintendo's just offering a smarter solution for it. Which is disruption. In that video I posted, he says "doing it better by doing it differently. That is disruption.
• Again with the Apple. I don't take anyone who mention Apple seriously. There is absolutly no evidence that Nintendo is going after Apple. The only time I've heard them talk about it was to say they were not going after Apple. This is poor reasoning. Stop using it.
• In order for them to disrupt Apple, Apple has to be overshooting. A disruption to the iPhone would be doing the smartphone differently. The 3DS has no smartphone features, which makes the whole Apple thing even more silly. A disruptive product does something differently, and comes into markets where there is overshooting. The 3DS's main feature is 3D, so, if it is disruptive, it must be trying to do 3D differently. So, it must be disrupting 3D. Sony is going all out on it, so it must be disrupting Sony. This is the only natural conclusion.

Nintendo's whole tack with 3DS against Sony (both at home and on handheld) has been purely competitive and rather direct in drawing comparisons (glassless 3D, low cost, 3rd party deluge).  This is pretty much not at all what we saw with DS or Wii, which were truly disruptive products and most often wouldn't even address competitors.

You're mixing up disruption with Blue Ocean Strategy. Blue Ocean Strategy is avoiding competition and focusing on what consumers want. The DS is not trying to disrupt anything. If it was, it would be trying to disrupt what the PSP is doing, which I have not seen a similarity between the two. Blue Ocean Strategy is about "making the competition irrelevant." The DS just avoids competition. This is also why the DS and PSP can exist in the same market.

Also, comparatively, you didn't see Nintendo move their internal R&D away from GameCube until 2005 really.  We then got Wii in 2006, and just 1 internal project for GC in the interim (Zelda TP).  If the same holds true for Wii (a system with FAR more appeal for Nintendo R&D than 2005-era GameCube) then getting Wii 2 next fiscal year lines up basically perfectly.  Obviously there's going to be a push to 3DS, but that in itself doesn't really explain the sudden vacuum of Wii support from EAD.  There's other indicators for a sooner, rather than later, successor launch as well (slowing support, rising piracy)... again, like Wii followed DS, I think you'll see Wii 2 follow 3DS, and that likely means being first to jump to the next cycle with a concerted effort on (traditionally PlayStation style) 3rd party commitments upfront.

Well that was a mess.

• Nintendo shifted away from the DS after New Super Mario Bros. and only released Zeldas and other games from their partners and outside developers (like Pokemon). This was 2006
• Nintendo will put most of their mussel into the 3DS which explains the move entirely. Nintendo is going to put their big games out early to make sure the system has a strong life span. You can attually attribute the Wii's decline to the hiccup of 2008. Had those titles preformed well enough, then the Wii would be doing fine. In fact, notice how, despite little to no third party support for the Wii in 2007 and 2008 that the system declines in 2009. Must not be the support then huh?
• Piracy would be a terrible reason to dumb a system. Neither the Wii nor the DS have shown great losses from piracy and their games and shoftware still preform well. The DS had piracy for a long time (which Nintendo fought) and they did just make a new DS. The train of though is wrong.
• Nintendo never reveals their whole hand. Everyone thought there would be a Wii 2 because Nintendo did not have a line up for the latter half of 2010. But then they show it. We only know a few games in 2011, but that doesn't mean those are the only ones.
• On third party support again: Nintendo this year is getting Just Dance 2, Epic Mickey and Goldeneye, all strong titles. This is more then what they have gotten in the past, showing that support is not a problem.
• I notice how you keep trying to compair this to the Gamecube and 64. Again, those systems wont follow the same timeline as the Wii as the Wii has preformed well in the market. The N64 and Gamecube were dead on their last years. The Wii probably wont be.