I don't think either of those is a good case of listening to the customers, though. With the PS3, I get the feeling Sony was just listening to themselves and drinking their own Kool-Aid. Much like MS with the Xbone. With the Wii U... well, I don't really know who Nintendo was listening to there. It doesn't look like anything that anyone ever asked for, and they don't even seem comfortable with their own product.

Despite the article being a bit confusing, I do kind off agree with the Idea. Nintendo made a really bold move with the Wii in order to connect with families and those that are not fans of traditional controllers. It payed off, but was a Gamble. MS sid something similar with their always-on approach and it didn't pay, not in the short term, because of a vocal community that are not necessarily representative of the märket as a whole.

I don't see how the lack of turning discs into a digital purchase prevents MS from doing some of the other things for the digital market. IE steam like prices. Perhaps they thought that only buy forcing it into all digital they would have enough digital purchases to make a difference? Honestly, being able to add a physical copy of something into a digital one is a great idea, but it really should be an option. I know we've been seeing some great sales on both consoles in the digital market places this summer hopefully that will only improve in the future.

In the PS3's case, it was a clear love letter to the "bigger is better" design mentality embraced by many core gamers: Blu-Ray wasn't just a trojan horse, it had the ability to bring bigger games than anyone had ever dreamed of, and the CELL would be a supercomputer in your console. With the Wii U, it was all the yelling about how Wii was missing out on the third party games because it wasn't HD (when we can see now that the third parties are determined to move their goal-posts) and needed a more normal controller, though enough of Nintendo's design team seemed to understand that was a bad idea, so tried to come up with a concept that could justify a console that was half Wii HD and half proper Wii successor...

But neither the PS1 nor the PS2 were successes because "bigger is better" or the vocal minority who cares about such things. The PS1's use of optical media lowered developer costs to such an extent that it won a critical mass of third party support, many of whom were already chafing under Nintendo's iron fisted rule, and the PS2 was just the continuation of the brand's momentum. In other words, they succeeded because of games and accessibility. By making an incredibly expensive console that had no games, Sony betrayed everything that their success was built upon and thus everything that their customers actually wanted.

Likewise, being an HD console is probably the least of the Wii U's problems. To the extent that it's a problem at all, it's mostly because Nintendo is just not very efficient at modern game development and going HD has only exacerbated things for them. I'd say this is probably the result of their conservative approach to studio expansion, which is itself the result of their desire to keep the company's culture intact. In any event, it is pretty clear that they, too, were not listening to their customers (i.e., people who actually bought the Wii) when they designed the Wii U.

This dilemma is certainly a real thing. You can ask people what they want, and they'll say, "A faster horse." And you have to realize that they don't actually want a horse at all but are communicating their desires in terms of the paradigm with which they're familiar. What they really want is to go faster, and if you can deliver something that is faster and not a horse that is acceptable in terms of safety, price, etc., they will be cool with that. So listening to your customers does have a lot of merit, but the trick is to figure out how to give them something that they don't even know they want yet. And in order to do that, you have to keep their core desires in mind.

Awesome read. Very insightful. It explains a lot as to why smaller, newer companies are the ones to innovate more.

This applies so well to Windows 8 too. And, to a certain extent, the Windows Mobile to Windows Phone transition. Wow. Customers will love you and ultimately ruin you.

I think we're confusing "listening to consumers" with not having a good creative vision in the first place. If the X1 was intended to always be on the internet and use cloud computing, Microsoft should have doubled down and made it into a streaming box. Basically, a glorified Roku with an XBox controller and Kinect attached: it *must* have a broadband internet connection to XBox Live to work. But you can also make streaming boxes like this for dirt cheap. We're talking $149 or $99 for the box, and then the subscription.

I don't think too many people would complain about requiring an internet connection if it meant the console was less than half as expensive.

As with the Wii U, I don't think this was a failure of creative vision or anything (and it certainly wasn't because they were listening to a consumer) but because they just assumed they could put hardware out and it would sell on its own without titles. They did that with the 3DS, too. It didn't work for either console because expecting 3D or tablet gimmicks to sell the hardware without titles is idiotic in the extreme. The Wii worked because it was packaged with Wii Sports and, more importantly, had Twilight Princess and a Resident Evil 4 port selling the wiimote LIKE CRAZY within the first few months.

I think so, too. At least, I think that's what Schell is doing. He sounds like a guy who read the Innovator's Dilemma over the weekend or something and fancies that it instantly made him 200% smarter.

Microsoft didn't roll back every single one of its policies because, even though they were supposedly integral to this wonderful creative vision of theirs, they love their customers and sincerely value their input. They did it because they had a disaster on their hands, and whatever they were hearing in terms of preorder numbers vs. the PS4 scared the bejesus out of them. The fact that they reversed on everything so quickly and completely makes it look like they had no creative vision at all (that they could never articulate this "vision" in the first place was very telling). It makes it look more like they were trying to get away with leveraging the Xbox's popularity into a huge power grab that would have permanently changed the dynamic in favor of the platform holder over the consumer, had their fingers burned by white hot consumer rage, and instantly pulled back.

Chalking that up to listening to consumers is laughable. It's called salvaging their console business.

Well noone asked for a $599 console. Remember Ken "get a second job to buy a PS3" Kutaragi? The PS3 like the PS1 and PS2 was his vision for Playstation. It was the be and to be-all entertainment system and it had to be cutting edge - from the CPU to the optical drive.

Personally, I don't see a problem with console manufacturers making more of the same and not innovating in the hardware department, because as long as the Software releases and remain new and fresh people will buy them. Hypothetically, if Nintendo released a traditional console without the Wii U pad (or 3D in the 3DS) it would still sell so long as they release Mario, Zelda or Donkey Kong on it, regardless of what innovation is pushed onto us.

The thing with trying to innovate with the sake of innovating is that more times then none it usually falls short of expectations. It could be that the the concept is not compelling enough to convince its audience, or that it was not a good idea in the first place. Moreover, R&D will take longer and will cost more than more proven methods. 

In theory, yeah. I am not much of a technophile. I don't get all tingly about the latest gadget or whatever, and I'd be perfectly happy with increasingly powerful PS2s with similarly diverse libraries from here on out.

But the problem is that if companies adopt that same mentality they leave themselves open to disruption. One day they can be on top of the world, and the next they are wondering what happened and how everyone passed them by. Unfortunately, not every innovation is good. Most aren't. There are very few true visionaries, and even visionaries some times come up with really stupid ideas. This is why they have to listen to customers and let the desires of the consumer inform their innovations or else they risk an Xbox One style fiasco of trying to lead where no one wants to follow.