| Alterego-X said: See, there is not neccessarily a clever corporation behind the event, disruption just happens "naturally", when an innovation catches the custumers with the lowest interest, and it naturally starts evolving. In our case, it is not just Nintendo disrupting the others, it is the combination of the Wiimote, and possibly their more accessible game design, disrupting the HD blockbusters with their huge budgets, and the classic controller. What we saw is the earliest form of motion controls, that might be inferior in case of some upmarket genres, not unlike the first muskets, that were inferior in precise aiming for some time. In theory, the industry could be disrupted without hurting the other companies, if they would adopt to the disruptive innovation on the 0th day. In reality, this is unlikely, because when the disruptor company's dominance in the downmarket becomes obvious, it is already too late for the incumbrent to go downmarket, because the downmarket became a red ocean, where the disruptor is on "home ground". When the disruptor moves upmarket, on the other hand, they have a more profitable strategy, more advanced technology, than the incumbrent.
The HD consoles motion controls are good examples of a counterattack somewhere between the downmarket and the upmarket, (middlemarket?), where they will fail because for them, it is just one of the possibilities to move there, while it is a natural process for the disruptor to go upmarket. If every executive, and even the inverstors of the incrumbents would be visionaries, they could fight for that market, build a huge software lineup for their motion controllers, and bleed money until it will be a red ocean and Nintendo leaves it, but likely they won't. |
Theres a significant difference between an Ipod example and a console example. In the Ipod case, Apple took control of essentially the entire market of people who wanted portable music players with very few non adopters left (saturation). With the Wii on the other hand, Nintendo controls something like 50% of the home console market for sold consoles, but less than a fifth of the potential market for consoles. This is the significant difference between the Wii case and say an Ipod case where the competition was completely shut out. With the former the competition can and will mount a counter attack because Nintendo simply has not locked up control of the market. The Wii as it exists cannot satisfy everyone in the market at once, the Wii M+ still cannot satisfy everyone at once.
We will see the results of the counter attack coming in 2010. To say at this point that they are destined to fail would mean that you would have to ignore the market dynamics. Neither Microsoft or Sony appear to be following a strategy of targetting consumers Nintendo has already won over. They are targetting areas of discourse between their relative market positions. This next stage isn't about trying to take Nintendo on directly, its to establish a beachhead for the respective interface technologies and from that position compete for the entirety of the market.
As an analogy, if you think of this as a game of Civilization. Sony would be targeting new highly productive cities towards the core between their civilisations and Microsoft would be targeting the sparsely populated, undeveloped and wide open expansion cities towards the rear.
Tease.
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