PGC didn't report it... so I will.
Forbes Interview: Nintendo's New LookGlad that Nintendo is getting mainstream coverage.
"Blue ocean" will be sink or swim for them, no pun intended. With all this buzzword hype, they better have some big plans. Nintendo talking about Sony and MS fighting over a finite marketshare ("Red Ocean") is ironic, though. Nintendo would love to have Sony's marketshare. And claiming to have the first wireless controllers... I can only HOPE revisionist history isn't Revolution's secret innovation.
It's sort of sad that in 15 years Nintendo hasn't been able to stop their own market from bleeding. To shun off games like FPS's and other edgy games just shows that Nintendo is still stubborn in some elementary ways and fixed in a pattern... making "their" types of games.
Might be smart, might not be. Maybe they're no longer interested in spending lots of money to make games suitable for matured genres. It's more cost effective to make new genres so that there's less to compare it to. (But then you alienate some players in the process.) Their successes have been hit and miss. With every interview that passes, Nintendo reads more like they're abandoning a ship they think is sinking, and hope they can hop on a new one... but it's only THEIR ship that's been sinking. They've yet to make the case that the pond is drying up.
Jeez, these metaphors are ridiculous.
On the other hand, Blue Ocean may be brilliant. Gamers are, afterall, only a segment of the population and Sony and MS own them hand over fist. The DS is doing well and even Atlus's Trauma Center is supposedly selling great. Can Nintendo's mindshare only go up from here, after this ho-hum generation?
Anyway, before the sarcastic "Nintendo am doomed" responses come along, their place in the market speaks for itself. I'm not saying they're doomed. I'm saying they clearly think something's wrong with the market when maybe, just maybe, they need to look in the mirror. Maybe Blue Ocean *is* the result of self-reflection. Time will tell. They talk the talk, a lot, but haven't made the case yet.
[Amazon snippet]
What is a BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY?
1. DO NOT compete in existing market space. INSTEAD you should create uncontested market space.
2. DO NOT beat the competition. INSTEAD you should make the competition irrelevant.
3. DO NOT exploit existing demand. INSTEAD you should create and capture new demand.
4. DO NOT make the value/cost trade-off. INSTEAD you should break the value/cost trade-off.
5. DO NOT align the whole system of a company's activities with its strategic choice of differentiation or low cost. INSTEAD you should align the whole system of a company's activities in pursuit of both differentiation and low cost.
Examples of strategic moves that created blue oceans of new, untapped demand:
- NetJets (fractional Jet ownership)
- Cirque du Soleil (the circus reinvented for the entertainment market)
- Starbucks (coffee as low-cost luxury for high-end consumers)
- Ebay (online auctioning)
- Sony (the Walkman - personal portable stereos)
- Cars: Japanese fuel-efficient autos (mid-70s) and Chrysler minivan (1984)
- Computers: Apple personal computer (1978) and Dell's built-to-order computers (mid-1990s).