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Forums - Gaming - Jesse Schell: Xbox, PlayStation and the Innovator's Dilemma

existenz2 on 05 August 2013

I stopped reading at "there were those that picked playstation 3 and that was wrong very wrong."

 

360 is last, bottom, behind everyone in world wide sales  this gen. PS3 sales have dominated non USA regions and has the best exclusives which keep coming and has also backed the most innovative or unusual title such as Heavy Rain, Flower and Journey etc



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hinch on 05 August 2013
badgenome said:
hinch said:

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.

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.

Agreed. It happened in the fifth gen to Nintendo when the origional Playstation launched, then this gen with Xbox 360 trouncing the PS3 in the first few years. And I can see the same thing happening in the 8th gen.

The thing is that consumers are the ones who dictate whether your product is a success, or not. By not listening to feedback from people who bought your products (like you said) they don't know how to improve on a product. A big disruption - like the origional Wii concept is very risky, considering that they are essentially trying to sell obsolete technology - with a catch (a very good one at that) for its core audience. But thankfully for Nintendo, and Iwata. It worked.



Mr Khan on 05 August 2013
hinch said:
Mr Khan said:

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...

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. 

My thoughts were that Sony came to believe that the reason PlayStation sold because of how cool the hardware was (recall that they made a lot of noise about the PS2's power initially), and that they cited the vocal minority who were always drooling over the latest graphics for Sony's more high-end offerings like Gran Turismo, Tourist Trophy, or God of War. Nobody "wanted" a $599 console, but Sony felt they wanted a console that could have bigger and badder games afforded by Blu-Ray and the latest in bleeding-edge graphics tech and a supercomputer-type processor.

In short, Sony both mis-read why they were successful and wanted to play into the superficial factors that cause the most hype amid the gaming community (power and features).



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oldschoolfool on 05 August 2013

I agree with the article. He makes some great points and I do see slow decline in the market share for consoles.



pokoko on 05 August 2013

That was really, really bad. Anyone that goes to the well several times with "everybody says" will be leaning on false arguments to start with but this guy takes the cake. He completely skips over any valid arguments that were presented, and lots were presented, and just cherry picks what he want to refute. Really, really awful stuff.

Also, we're back to the stupidity of the Big 3 "losing" market share. No, they aren't going to regain the level of market share they once had, because much of the market is new and made up of people who were never console gamers in the first place.



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Alby_da_Wolf on 07 August 2013

Basically Schell's reasonment is flawed: new features are surely welcome innovations, incentive to use them, as they bring many benefits to the producer too, are perfectly legit, BUT REMOVING OLD BUT USEFUL FEATURES AND SOME USERS RIGHTS ISN'T INNOVATION!!!
MS did a 180 on always on and used games because many users were rightfully mad, but it could still give those new benefits to those that accept voluntarily the online check, old user rights and new features for those that regularly check online AREN'T mutually exclusive, and if MS tries to make user believe they are, it's lying.



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JinxRake on 07 August 2013

I wonder why so many big wigs are desperate for there to be a war between big PC/Console gaming and the smaller casual games. It's like it's unbelievable that the two could coexist, even share part of the market.



SvennoJ on 07 August 2013

Apart from all the blah blah blame the customer crap:

"The thing that's going to make the biggest difference in the next four years, say, is that someone's going to come out with a great gaming tablet - a really grade-A tablet for games. Exactly what that means I don't know; I suspect it has a separate hand controller, and I'm sure that it connects up to your TV no problem.

So how is that WiiU flying of the shelf? I guess he means one that you can play anywhere untethered. But I'm sure I'm not the only one that likes completely different game experiences on tablet and big screen tv with surround sound. It's not the same, stop trying to push games into a one size fits all model. I don't want to pay extra for a tablet that's permanently hooked up to my tv anyway, probably with external HDD, charger and what not.