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

thekitchensink on 02 September 2008
Picko said:
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.

So, in other words, this post can be summed up by the phrase "read the thread before posting".

 



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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celine on 02 September 2008
noname2200 said:
RolStoppable said:
*Explanation*

Nice explanation: succinct but thorough.

My question is Why is Nintendogs considered a Blue Ocean product, but earlier products such as Petz (on the GBA) and other games targeted towards girls are NOT widely considered Blue Ocean, despite their feeding an underserved market? If it's the (undisputed) fact that Nintendogs was a much higher quality product, does that not just make it a sustaining product? Or does the fact that Nintendogs was much more aggressive and ambitious in this regard mean that it was reaching beyond the small subset of girls already had a minimal interest in games, and onto a much broader range?

It's not about demogaphic but about a peculiar job ( that job will attract the crummy consumers if it is an effective one ).

It isn't only a matter of what you do but also of how you do. Execution is fundamental.

BTW good post Rol



 “In the entertainment business, there are only heaven and hell, and nothing in between and as soon as our customers bore of our products, we will crash.”  Hiroshi Yamauchi

TAG:  Like a Yamauchi pimp slap delivered by Il Maelstrom; serving it up with style.

celine on 02 September 2008
Sky Render said: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.

Diablo

I remember that many PC RPG gamers purist always refused to consider Diablo a proper PC RPG.

Blizzard is a good case of study

 



 “In the entertainment business, there are only heaven and hell, and nothing in between and as soon as our customers bore of our products, we will crash.”  Hiroshi Yamauchi

TAG:  Like a Yamauchi pimp slap delivered by Il Maelstrom; serving it up with style.

Sky Render on 02 September 2008

Action RPGs existed before Diablo, with the same values as Diablo in terms of action-oriented gameplay. The fact that it's an action RPG, therefore, is not the driving value behind its success. That it's a simple RPG to play, on the other hand, may have a lot to do with it. Diablo was the prototype for the one-click combat model used in most modern MMORPGs.



Sky Render - Sanity is for the weak.

thekitchensink on 03 September 2008

Sorry to bump an old topic, but I just thought it would be interesting to add that, unprompted, the same girl expressed her extreme desire to play Wii again, and that I got her hooked



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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richardhutnik on 16 June 2009
Sky Render said:
Action RPGs existed before Diablo, with the same values as Diablo in terms of action-oriented gameplay. The fact that it's an action RPG, therefore, is not the driving value behind its success. That it's a simple RPG to play, on the other hand, may have a lot to do with it. Diablo was the prototype for the one-click combat model used in most modern MMORPGs.

Diablo turned the venerable "Net Hack" game genre into something accessible, by making it real-time (rather than turn-based) and upped the graphics.   Blizzard took what was an original turn-based Nethack game, and made it a real-time action-RPG game.  The end result was the interface that helped advance the RPG genre.

 



Squilliam on 17 June 2009

Economic theory: In competitive markets economic profit in the long term approaches zero as higher profits encourage firms to enter the market.

That seems like as good an explanation as anything else for why markets would appear to decline.



Tease.

Showertea on 17 June 2009

It's not product differentiation because that implies you're sharing a market. Hotdogs aren't a 'product differentiation' from helicopters. One sates your hunger, and the other takes you around.

The Blue Ocean is, instead of selling hamburgers in a big city, finding starving people in the desert and selling them hamburgers. The starving people in the desert don't care if your hamburgers are kind of crummy, and they'll be willing to pay way more for it, and you don't have to worry about competition. Casual gamers were starving in the desert. They liked to have fun, but nobody was making games that were fun for them.

Also, I'm confused by the posts in this thread about the DS 'strangling' the hardcore market in terms of the PSP. The PSP is the best selling non-nintendo portable in history. Its not getting strangled by 'casual gamers', its getting strangled by the almost complete dominance Nintendo has had of the portable space since the original Gameboy.



Wii has more 20 million sellers than PS3 has 5 million sellers.

Acolyte of Disruption

Kenology on 17 June 2009

Sky Render: Please explain to the pups what the Red Ocean is.



Bitmap Frogs on 17 June 2009

Is tuna tastier if fished on a Blue Ocean?





Current-gen game collection uploaded on the profile, full of win and good games; also most of my PC games. Lucasfilm Games/LucasArts 1982-2008 (Requiescat In Pace).