I read the Innovator's Dilemma last year and ever since then I have come to think more and more that Malstrom is wrong. Nintendo is not a disruptor, it just has competitors that entered without a clue what was really happening in the industry.
There are big points that he never addresses. One is that it is pretty much impossible for the disruptor to be one of the established and leading companies in the field. You can't be much more established than Nintendo and it was one of the leading companies. Its values are supposed prevent it from actually using its ideas effectively. Another is that the disruptive technology will start in small unwanted markets while the Wii simply came in at number 1.
The disruption theory was made to show how well run companies fail. I intend to show how the Xbox and Playstation were never truly well run companies in the video game industry.
The Xbox doesn't really need much to show. It showed up the first time last generation and failed miserably compared to the biggest competition and lost a **** load of money. The next generation the Wii entered. A one time entry before and essentially a failure doesn’t need to be disrupted to lose or point out that they are in the same position.
Now you might be saying “Sony had two very successful consoles, how can they be mismanaged?” I will show you.
Malstrom talks about how the old measure of progression in the industry was graphics. It is certainly true graphics needed to increase each generation to an extent to draw interest it was never the main selling point for a console in the same generation (software was).
I claim that there has always been a second and equally as important progression in the industry. That progression is control. Malstrom says motion is a new value, it is not. It is simply one of the aspects of the value of control. Every single Nintendo system has had different control schemes. Motion is not some new value that needs to be added, it is simply another progression of the control of games that Nintendo has changed. Nintendo had even experimented with it in the past with the Power Glove. It is not new, at least for Nintendo and its values.
Nintendo started with a brand new controller with Game and Watch and then entered the games industry with it taking over. (I am not going to do the research so this is probably wrong but the very basics make it sound like the control scheme is disruptive. It begins in an unwanted market and then moves up and takes over the console market.) They then change the controller with the next consoles (the current competition never has) and even add additional ones like the power glove and superscope (and the original blaster).
Sony first entered the market with what was essentially a Nintendo console and controller because of the broken deal. Its controls were basically snes with extra shoulder buttons. Nintendo shows up with the analog stick and gets everybody excited about the new things they can do. Sony copies it easily and adds a second one that luckily has use in fps games. They still don’t have the ability to rise in this dimension of games, they just copy what they see as the next thing if possible.
The next generation comes and Sony releases the same controller. Nintendo changes there controller and in my opinion make it superior to ps2 controller except for the terrible c stick. Why was it not changed more or differently? It could be simply be to the lack of motion or other technology available or perhaps the next idea had not arrived since the two analog sticks had not been visited by Nintendo. We are talking one moment of less change (not no change) and if we made a graph of controller technology changing it wouldn’t matter much if the video games industry was not so new. Even at this point Nintendo is trying to find ways to make the controller easier to use and they emphasize it.
The Wii comes out with a new control scheme and Sony attempts to copy it but it is too different to include in what they know (the ps2 contoller) and they have no experience designing new input methods for the Playstation. They obviously think that the current controller will be their forever because they constantly say “the industry standard.” Sony was never capable of competing in the field of controls. They got lucky with the ease of incorporating the analog stick and simply got rocked on the next big change.
Now you might ask me “What about the hardcore rebellion?” I laugh at this. The Nintendo hardcore never rebelled. Look a NWR. The biggest posters are still here. I even see Ian talk about stuff even though I’m not really sure if he owns a DS or Wii (I know he doesn’t have the others).
I also say that motion controls did not make the hardcore super angry. Two things did besides the usual console wars dickery.
1. Nintendo didn’t upgrade their graphics much. This pissed off the technophile section of the hardcore. They love high end graphics and computer technology. They saw this as an insult. This is probably the biggest risk Nintendo took with both the Wii and DS, not upgrading the graphics technology to keep the price down.
2, Nintendo marketed the Wii as something for casuals. They could have easily decided to market it to the hardcore with sayings like “You’ve never been this immersed into a game. Motion controls make you feel like your part of the game.” Basically powerglove ads redux “Everything else is child’s play!” Nintendo announced that they didn’t think the extremely vocal minority was the most important thing ever and that new people were actually more important. It pissed the “hardcore” off.
Motion controls also did turn off a very, very small minority of current gamers. Guess what? So did the last big controller shift to the analog stick controlling 3d movement! I am looking at you a Malstrom! I know other people who never upgraded to n64 because they didn’t like the new analog controlled, 3d Mario and Zelda. The analog control is equally as important as the graphics because without the control there would be no 3d Mario or Zelda or maybe just terrible ones. It wasn't the 3d graphics that chased people like Malstrom away, he loves NSMB. It was the new 3d controls aka the analog stick.
Nintendo is not a disruptor, it is just competing in more than one field like it always has. They entered the industry with the new game and watch control scheme and didn’t stop changing, refining, and doubting it while the other current companies never second guessed it until Nintendo did something.
In his book Christensen says a lot of people like to use “disruption” but its not really it and Malstrom and Nintendo are one of those cases. This doesn’t take away from the success of Nintendo or make Malstroms predictions wrong, it is just my attempt at showing what really happened in the industry.
edit: I know its long but if you read any of the books Malstrom calls articles this should be breeze.
Topic: The smartest person on the Internet (Read 108479 times)
