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Forums - Sales - Is Nintendo the Only Company in Gaming that Knows How to Find Blue Oceans?

HappySqurriel on 16 June 2007
godf said:
sony's marketing for PS and PS2 moved it into blue water.

And there's still a lot of brand loyalty left over from that too. Still a lot of casual gamers who'd much rather get a PS3 then 360 when the prices came down.

Except (of course) that "casual gamers" don't spend $300 (and rarely spend $200) on a console so it is possible the PS3 will never be inexpensive enough for the customer base they built.



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misterd on 16 June 2007
dallas said:

" leaving Nintendo a chance to revisit it's past philosophies of increasing interface to drive sales.."

 

 

 think that you misunderstand nintendo's philosophy, Thesource.

The "blue ocean" naming of it's corporate strategy, is simply an appealing name and has no other significance.

The critical area of its current strategy has nothing to do with the wii remote thingy, the main focus is that Nintendo is using yesterday's technology, yesterday's old but still OK computer innards, so that it can deliver easy to make games that everybody can afford. While sony is clumsily getting its act together, nintendo's easy to make games have already been selling very well, and have a big audience not only b/c of the nintendo brand but b/c most people would be able to afford its products.


Actually Blue Ocean refers to a specific marketing strategy. The term was not coined by Nintendo. It refers to the strategy of leaving the "red seas" left bloody by competition in favor of new, open uncontested (and profitable) waters. In this case, it is not the price that Nintendo is using to appeal to new gamers. The prices eventually drop for all consoles, but these new gamers never bought them. Nintendo believes that the complex controls of traditional consoles intimidated nongamers, and wanted a simple interface to overcome this barrier. The DS started and validated this idea (think Nintendogs or Brainage), and the Wii expands it.

misterd on 16 June 2007
Bodhesatva said:
DKII said:
I think PS1/PS2 mostly grew the market in Europe a ton, so their Blue Ocean would mainly be non-US non-Japan people. :P Though the whole media center concept surely helped growth in US and Japan too, but I don't think the market doubled there.

It was also 18-25 year old males. It's so long ago we may not even remember, but pre-PS1, video games were largely seen as young boy territory. From the PS1 through the PS2, it came to be viewed as young MALE territory. It is an important difference, actually. 


I was in that age group at the time. We were the first gaming generation, and most of us never left the market. So Sony didn't expand into that age group - time just pushed us into it. All Sony did was market to it. Otherwise most would have stuck with Nintendo or Sega.