GrimPoppet said: @WoW I don't think a better wiimote would make a difference, simply enhacing existing products is not disruption.

There are three avenues of competition:  Cost, Features, and Value.

In Cost competition, the company with the lowest cost (maybe price) wins.  This is a Nintendo specialty as they always turn a profit.

In Feature competition, the company with the most or best features wins.  Nintendo tends to do one or two really innovative things a generation.  If Microsoft can begin doing what Nintendo already does and doing it better along with doing a few things of its own (achievements...etc) Nintendo doesn't do, it can compete well. 

In Value competition, you blend the above two.  You may not have the best feature set or the best cost, but you provide the best features at the best cost.  Microsoft is trying to position its lower-end 360 models here with mixed success.

Microsoft doesn't need to come out with some wacky idea every generation but if it can steadily improve on everything it does and easily out-do its competition on many levels, that will be a disruption in itself. 

GrimPoppet said: The mp3 players disrupted the Walkman, and the iPod disrupted the mp3 players. The iPod appealed to those who wanted to get a "better" music experience, and then they reached the mainstream via pricecuts. The lol was for the shovelware part. Also, sorry if my posts are a little confusing, but I find them fairly good for a 14 year old whose main language is spanish =P   @WoW I don't think a better wiimote would make a difference, simply enhacing existing products is not disruption.

Well now, would you read the bolded parts. You could say MP3 players disrupted Walkman, but that's if you count iPod in them. The problem with MP3 players disrupting Walkman was, that when they came out, you had two choices, a)download music illegally from the internet b)buy the CD and rip the songs. Option "a" fails in the way, that ten years ago, internet wasn't as common as it is today and a lot of people doesn't want to break the law. Option "b" has the problem that having MP3 player seems kind of useless, since you could still use your CD player. What the iPod did? Along with iPod, came the iTunes, from which you could legally and easilly purchase music for your iPod. And the shovelware part is true, Nintendo and Sega were really picky about what games can be released on their platforms. Sony as a newcomer had to accept everything someone was willing to put on their platform.

They would have to do something like Johnny Lee.

It's hard to predict what the "disrupting feature" is because, well, it wouldn't be disruptive if we expected it.

So IMHO...User-based content creation. And I mean, real content creation.

Take a look at the internet. At first, people were willing to receive websites. There were a few webportals here and there that people would visit. Then there were too many webportals and users needed a way to search and filter what they wanted. Hence, Google became king.

Finally, people wanted to make their own webpages. Yes, HTML existed for a while but it wasn't really until blogs sprang up that people found it easy enough to make webpages. So Facebook, orkut, (um...Star something in Europe, sorry I'm American) rule the roost.

I feel videogames could go in this direction if they could make easy game creation. Right now, there are so many games on the market. Maybe too many. We need a way to search and filter games selections so we don't rely on name brand (like webportals) to make a good purchase.

Everyone wants to make a game. But most people don't want to learn code, development tools, and software engineering. The next big step, the next big leap, is to let people modify any game and do it in an easy way. And to INVITE people to modify.

If someone pulls this off, the current gaming companies would have to release their Intellectual Property. And they'd lose "ownership" of their games. For many this is too big a cost, and they wouldn't follow even if the "make your own games" system truly took off.

'Disruption' is just a way to describe a strategy which is focused on something that the conventional wisdom within the market would say is unimportant, but in reality is very important. In a lot of ways you could say that the rise of the Japaneese car was because Japaneese automobile manufacturers used a disruptive startegy in the american auto market; in the 1970s they focused on fuel ecconomy while American car manufacturers produced muscle cars which gave them an edge after the OPEC oil crysis (where American car manufacturers were forced to play catch-up).

In the short term future (essentially this generation) I don't believe it is possible for someone to disrupt the market in a way that gives them an advantage because the effects of Nintendo's disruption are still being felt. In the comming generation it is quite possible that someone could implement a strategy which disrupts the market and takes marketshare away from Nintendo. Now the question is 'what could that be?'

One future I see happening is what I call an "online platform" where the borders between one game and another become blured. Imagine a MMO game where everything you can imagine is possible, a true sandbox game with (virtually) unlimited possibilities.

Nintendo can definitely be disrupted.

I'm working on an editorial on how to do it actually, it should be up sometime in the next ~week or two.

The way I look at it...is this.

 Gaming World Map:

 Niche Market                                                                                           Everyone Market

<83'             A  

83'-95'                    B                    C

95'-06'                                                         D                   E

06'-?                                                                                                    F
 

Atari's fortunes rose and fell trying to protect and grow 'A'. Nintendo was able to expand market 'A' by doing really well in Japan, and making the USA market bigger, and trying to put a stake in the Euro market. When games proved too complex, etc, Game Boy was introduced to move the industry to a larger audience, 'C'. With PS1 Sony recognized that group B and C were trying to convince others to game, but a level of realism or story telling was missing. PS1 was able to bring some of those people in for group D. Group E with PS2 was an expansion of group D by adding some 'realistic control' to the other realism. Group F wanted a unified easier control scheme though, and Nintendo saw that.

The thing is no one knows exactly where group 'B' wants were looking from group 'A', no one knew exactly where group 'C' was looking from group 'B', etc. Whenever a company that failed to please an audience as well as its rivals in the era nails it in the next battle, you see a monumental shift in fortune.

Based on that, the next opportunity will probably be in beating Nintendo to China & India as significant players when those markets grow to a size of say...Japan before exploding. Look how long it has taken Nintendo to begin to unseat Sony in Europe where Sony made videogames mainstream. 

If Nintendo beats the competition to India and China by establishing itself well, it may never be kicked around to the extent it was in the past five to ten years again. 

Nintendo have this generation so well in the bag that nothing's going to stop them, but it's always possible for another company to think of a better business model to disrupt them in the future.

It'll be interesting to see what happens if some of the more advanced developing countries turn into decent sized console markets. After the leaps of Atari -> NES, SNES -> PS1, and PS2 -> Wii, that's probably going to be the next big one.

... except with that formula the Wii's successor would be roughly as popular, and the next console from another company would be the next to expand the market, right? ^^

Just ignore me, I'm getting stupid again.

Sorry TheSource, but it's hard to look at history here, and predict the future. Well, Video Gaming history anyway. You could probability look at some other industry's progression and find parallels.

What the industry is today, and what the consumer is, is so radically different, the rules have changed.

Personally, the only thing I can see disrupting Ninetndo, is Nintendo. It all depends on what the next console ends up being. It could be a huge success, or a small one (even Nintendo's failures have been small successes).

If you made a console, Jacob, you´d be disrupting everyone, Nintendo included :D