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Forums - Sales - Questions about Blue Ocean Strategy? Ask here.

thekitchensink on 02 September 2008
cAPSLOCK said:
Hawkeye said:
Do you think the hardcore wll become marginalized? Or will the new gamers eventually drift towards the center of the gaming circle? The NES had rob and duckhunt and basically did the same thing as the Wii, and then got kids to become hardcore with bridge titles like Mario. Existing PC/arcade hardcore had games like metroid or FF. Then SNES got more people to be hardcore, and then Nintendo lost their market to Sony. Will this likely happen again?

If I can chime in on this one, and correct me if I'm wrong Sky:

Nintendo uses the term "bridge title" to explain games like Mario Kart Wii. The purpose of games like this is to bring the newer players to these higher tiers of gaming. So you get someone who bought the Wii for Wii Sports or Wii Fit who sees this game and it's non-threatening Wii Wheel and decides to give it a shot.

Well, now instead of the old fart playing Wii Bowling all day and being a "non-gamer" playing "non-games" you now officially have a gamer, playing a real game.  If they don't like it they'll go back to the old non-gamer pasture and if they do like it, chances are good they'll keep crossing bridges.

"Gateway drug" isn't the right word, but it's the first word that comes to mind.

If anything, this strategy is bringing in new people who will cross those bridges and check out the higher end titles.

*GASP* Maybe even buy a PS3 or 360

I imagine Super Mario Galaxy and other such games will have unusually strong legs (like the DS counterparts) not because of old Nintendo hands that continue to buy them but because this new market of gamers who are moving across those bridges and discovering these titles for the first time.

I know anecdotal evidence sucks, but I can tell you for a fact that this is the case for my neice, my 32 year old sister, my 35 year old brother, his wife, her husband, my 54 year old mom who is now going through Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and my wife who beat Gears of War with me.  That's just my immediate family. But all of them are somewhere in the gaming lands and have crossed a bridge or 2.

It will strengthen the market, obviously. It's just that the dumb and weak companies will be gone. Adapt or perish in the business world.

If I could just add to this example, I actually recently sparked gaming interest in a non-gamer inside of a day.  (Kinda proud of myself, actually )

 

My 'friend-who-is-a-girl-but-not-a-girlfriend' had only played a few games in her life, and had never even played any Mario game.  She was in my room, we had just watched a movie, and were wondering what to do next.  I asked if she wanted to play Wii.  She was surprised that I had one, and said that she'd wanted to try it.

So I popped in Wii Sports.  But before we played the game, I stopped at the Mii Channel, and showed her how to make a funny little character that looks just like her that she can use to play the games.

Then we started playing (she wanted Tennis). It took some doing but she started getting the timing right after a bit and we were jumping aroundthe room and yeling in no time.  I beat her every tennis game (she didn't score on me once),but then she held her own in Baseball and absolutely SMOKED me at bowling.  Good times were had by all.

 

Now that she understood the basics of the Wiimote, I popped in Warioware to show off the versatility of the controller and help her see how it would apply to real actions (ie shaking it at your side is like a hula hoop, punching actually punche, etc.)  We playd t for about an hour (hell, even I wanted to stop, but she wanted to keep going!) before I went for the gold and showed her Mario Kart.

Honestly, even though I beat her in every single race, she had a fantastic time and we were laughing as she would try to take my pointers about using items or turning the Wiimote only very slightly.

We probably  went through about 10 races before she started getting the hang of it, but we had TONS of fun, and here's the kicker:

After we were done, we went to her place and watched another movie and did some other stuff unrelated to gaming.  As I was leaving afterward, she told me to call her soon because she "REALLY want[s] to play Wii with [me] again soon!"

 

Do you see what happened there?



Could I trouble you for some maple syrup to go with the plate of roffles you just served up?

Tag, courtesy of fkusumot: "Why do most of the PS3 fanboys have avatars that looks totally pissed?"
"Ok, girl's trapped in the elevator, and the power's off.  I swear, if a zombie comes around the next corner..."
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noname2200 on 02 September 2008
thekitchensink said:

After we were done, we went to her place and watched another movie and did some other stuff unrelated to gaming.  As I was leaving afterward, she told me to call her soon because she "REALLY want[s] to play Wii with [me] again soon!"

 

Do you see what happened there?

You failed to finish the job?



Sky Render on 02 September 2008

Yeah, I see what happened. You passed a golden opportunity up. :P

What you did there was the most clever form of marketing there is: experience advertising. That's actually a common tactic in Blue Ocean products, and one that the companies themselves employ when they seek funding for the product. If you can show that your product is compelling by getting the user to try it, the user is more likely to back it than if you just tell them how it's compelling.

Or as Malstrom would put it, show them that they're awesome, not that you're awesome.



Sky Render - Sanity is for the weak.

thekitchensink on 02 September 2008
noname2200 said:
thekitchensink said:
 

After we were done, we went to her place and watched another movie and did some other stuff unrelated to gaming.  As I was leaving afterward, she told me to call her soon because she "REALLY want[s] to play Wii with [me] again soon!"

 

Do you see what happened there?

You failed to finish the job?

LOL she's a non-gamer and we played for four hours straight until we both needed some fresh air.

 



Could I trouble you for some maple syrup to go with the plate of roffles you just served up?

Tag, courtesy of fkusumot: "Why do most of the PS3 fanboys have avatars that looks totally pissed?"
"Ok, girl's trapped in the elevator, and the power's off.  I swear, if a zombie comes around the next corner..."
thekitchensink on 02 September 2008
Sky Render said:
Yeah, I see what happened. You passed a golden opportunity up. :P

What you did there was the most clever form of marketing there is: experience advertising. That's actually a common tactic in Blue Ocean products, and one that the companies themselves employ when they seek funding for the product. If you can show that your product is compelling by getting the user to try it, the user is more likely to back it than if you just tell them how it's compelling.

Or as Malstrom would put it, show them that they're awesome, not that you're awesome.

 

 Thanks

 

@the bolded part: she's got a bf XD



Could I trouble you for some maple syrup to go with the plate of roffles you just served up?

Tag, courtesy of fkusumot: "Why do most of the PS3 fanboys have avatars that looks totally pissed?"
"Ok, girl's trapped in the elevator, and the power's off.  I swear, if a zombie comes around the next corner..."
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noname2200 on 02 September 2008
thekitchensink said:
noname2200 said:
thekitchensink said:

After we were done, we went to her place and watched another movie and did some other stuff unrelated to gaming.  As I was leaving afterward, she told me to call her soon because she "REALLY want[s] to play Wii with [me] again soon!"

 

Do you see what happened there?

You failed to finish the job?

LOL she's a non-gamer and we played for four hours straight until we both needed some fresh air.

 

Not quite what I was referring to, sport.

 



thekitchensink on 02 September 2008
noname2200 said:
thekitchensink said:
noname2200 said:
thekitchensink said:
 

After we were done, we went to her place and watched another movie and did some other stuff unrelated to gaming.  As I was leaving afterward, she told me to call her soon because she "REALLY want[s] to play Wii with [me] again soon!"

 

Do you see what happened there?

You failed to finish the job?

LOL she's a non-gamer and we played for four hours straight until we both needed some fresh air.

 

Not quite what I was referring to, sport.

 

Damn, forgot the that I meant to put at the end!  Still, see my response to Sky.

 Edit: added the '''" to the post you quoted--meant to show the sarcasm to begin with.



Could I trouble you for some maple syrup to go with the plate of roffles you just served up?

Tag, courtesy of fkusumot: "Why do most of the PS3 fanboys have avatars that looks totally pissed?"
"Ok, girl's trapped in the elevator, and the power's off.  I swear, if a zombie comes around the next corner..."
noname2200 on 02 September 2008
thekitchensink said:
noname2200 said:
thekitchensink said:
noname2200 said:
thekitchensink said:

Damn, forgot the that I meant to put at the end!  Still, see my response to Sky.

 



Picko on 02 September 2008
Sky Render said:

 I don't profess to be an expert on the Blue Ocean Strategy, but I can help if anybody wants to know more about it.  Malstrom tends to do a good job of explaining it, but he's also very long-winded.  So I figured I'd answer questions right away, tersely and to the point.  I don't know how many are interested, but I figured I should offer.

 I'll list the three most common questions here.  Read whatever interests you, if any does.

What is a "Blue Ocean Strategy"?

 Any business plan that bypasses the competition with new values is following a Blue Ocean Strategy.  To have a Blue Ocean Strategy, you need to make new values that are not being targeted in an industry.  There are many ways of doing this, which I'll discuss next.

What kind of Blue Ocean Strategies are there?

 Though all of them rely on creating new values ("value innovation"), there's many ways to do this.  For example, you can target people who don't get much focus from your market ("underserved"), as [yellow tail] wines did towards non-enthusiast wine drinkers.  You can target the same groups as the market already does but with a better-suited service, as NetJets did for businesses needing cheap air travel.  You can target people outside of the market entirely by making it more accessible to them, as NTT DoCoMo did with specialized internet-enabled cell phones in Japan.  And many other ways exist too, inside these three general groups: customers on the fringe, current customers, and non-customers.

How does a Blue Ocean Strategy work?

 Simply put, the product does something that the competitors at the time do not do.  By offering something that nobody else does, a brand can be forged which gives the innovator 10 to 15 years of dominance in their new market before capable competitors eat into their new market's share.  You can see this at work in the game industry all over the place: Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Grand Theft Auto, Mario, Zelda, Gran Turismo, Mario Kart, Pokemon, Halo, and many other series sell far above their competitors for their market innovations.

 

 Ask whatever questions you have about Blue Ocean Strategies here.  I'll answer them as best I can.

 

So in other words, it can all be summed up by the phrase "product differentiation". But overall, all that post did was remind me why nobody takes "business" or "marketing" studies seriously.



 
Debating with fanboys, its not
all that dissimilar to banging ones
head against a wall 
Sky Render on 02 September 2008

Summing up complex ideas in single phrases is just as useless to the layman as expanding complex ideas out to their full meaning. The former over-simplifies and reduces understanding to cliches, while the latter confuses and alienates anybody not versed in the subject. I'm taking the middle road here and explain it enough, without getting into the nitty-gritty specifics.

Incidentally, you cannot sum it up as "product differentiation". There are differentiated products which do not form Blue Oceans. Many examples exist in the video game industry, but the most profound I can think of is the sub-genre of action RPG. The action RPG has a clear differentiation from the traditional turn-based RPG, yet there is no 'leader' brand for action RPGs as there would if it originated from a Blue Ocean. Product differentiation can be found in both segmentation and Blue Ocean Strategy. It is, in short, a component of markets, not an exclusive trait of Blue Oceans.



Sky Render - Sanity is for the weak.