RolStoppable, you are cordially invited to a debate with me. (Other users may also post of course!)

I want you to answer this little question, and I want to get to the bottom of the Gen 5 failure with you. I've been mulling over it all day and want to get it off my chest.

First question.

Since the Playstation, a new entry in the market, managed to boot Nintendo off the throne within the Red Market, using Red Market strategy, why did it work? Why did Red Ocean strategy work for Sony, and what did Nintendo do wrong for its Red Ocean strategy to fail? (since they obviously went Red Ocean)

For this answer, do not tell me they should have gone Blue Ocean, we'll discuss that as a separate issue, since truth is, the outcome could have been much different even with just a Red Ocean strategy.

Ultimately this will lead to many other questions  (for later), such as:

Is the Blue ocean strategy for gen5 mostly visible in Hindsight?

What were the risks involved in going Blue Ocean? Can it fail? (of course the answer is yes) When it fails is it still called blue ocean, or an abomination?

What about the risk of losing Red Ocean marketshare by going Blue Ocean?

And ultimately, why was the N64 an abomination? Why is it not just a failed Red Ocean attempt? Why was the Cube not just a failed Blue Ocean attempt? (related post @abomination)

Rol, feel free to relegate me to your prior posts, but do post the argument related to what I need to look at.

Lack of third party support because of the limitations of cartridges(N64) and PS2 had all the biggest exclusives (Gamecube).

By the way I hate this "blue ocean/red ocean" it was called positioning. Jack Trout and Al Ries came up with it back in the 70s.

Maybe Nintendo should have a 4/5 year gen cycle. It seems to be a pattern that Nintendo, 3rd party devs and gamers abandon the system before the end of each gen.

Both consoles were very very good, mostly thanks to 1rst and 2nd party development.......THEY WERENT ABINATIONS AT ALL!!!! also N64 was not a big failure in terms of sales, at least not as big as GC, which by the way was the best 128 bit console,,,,just my opinion

Funny thing about this, Nintendo would've extended the life of the Famicom were it not for impending competition. There are things you just can't do when competition is around, things you can when they aren't. Going lax end of cycle is fine and dandy when nobody is there to threaten your marketspace. But when the competition is there, you need to anticipate and block before they entrench too far. A reduced cycle would have helped.

The negatives of this SJ, users feel ripped off because they have to upgrade. Luckily, we're almost at the end of this short lifecycle nonsense, which is obviously linked to HW advancements, from the inceptions of the VG industry.

Gens are by definition born from the fact that HW constantly needs to be upgraded in order to meet demand. It shouldn't have a reason of existence in the short future.

I just read about positioning, it is very different from blue/red ocean concepts.

Positioning is about consumer persception. Blue/Red ocean is about marketshare and actual untapped needs or demand, in contrast with Positioning's perception focus. The goals are very different.

Wii certainly made use of positioning through an image metamorphosis (no doubt), but they also applied blue/red ocean strategy.

Where I got my info on positioning:

What is Their "Positioning"

Positioning is something (perception) that happens in the minds of the target market.

It is the aggregate perception the market has of a particular company, product or service in relation to their perceptions of the competitors in the same category.

It will happen whether or not a company's management is proactive, reactive or passive about the on-going process of evolving a position.

But a company can positively influence the perceptions through enlightened strategic actions.

In marketing, positioning has come to mean the process by which marketers try to create an image or identity in the minds of their target market for its product, brand, or organization. It is the 'relative competitive comparison' their product occupies in a given market as perceived by the target market.

Re-positioning involves changing the identity of a product, relative to the identity of competing products, in the collective minds of the target market.

De-positioning involves attempting to change the identity of competing products, relative to the identity of your own product, in the collective minds of the target market.

First off, I hate the title.
Secondly, Red Ocean, Blue Ocean... O_o?! What do these terms mean?

@happydolphin

I have to disagree, I have read all books by Jack Trout and blue/red ocean is very similar to what he wrote about decades ago in Positioning, Marketing Warfare and Bottom up marketing.

The N64 was not even close to an abomination.  The only reason it "lost" to the PS1 was because Nintendo made the tactical mistake (in hindsight) of not switching to CDs and instead stuck with carts, which led to an exodus of 3rd party support and frequent periods of software droughts for the system, while the PS1, thanks to Sony's aggressive marketing, received a steady stream of software including many system selling exclusives like FF7 and multiplatform games like Tomb Raider that would have been on the N64 as well if it used CDs.

The Gamecube on the other hand was, for all intents and purposes, an abomination.  Why?

JUST LOOK AT THE DAMNED THING!!!

The fact that Nintendo honestly thought THIS would be their ticket back to being the market leader shows just how out of touch with reality they were back in the late 90s and the first half of the last decade.

B-b--but...they were fun. 

And they had good games.

I guess that doesn't count for much these days.