How did Wii outsale PS3
According to a market research firm, as of the end of April 2007, Nintendo has sold 2.5 million Wii consoles in the US, almost double PlayStation 3’s sales and closing in on Xbox 360’s 5.4 millions sales. There is a little doubt that the video gaming market is now divided.
The question is how did we come to this situation? Few years back, Nintendo was considered a “dead” company by many analysts. Sony’s game console was the king. What did Sony do wrong? What did Nintendo do right?
Answers to those questions can be found in this recent New York Times article. The key to the Nintendo’s success is innovation. First, the company avoided to directly compete with others in terms of hardware capabilities and graphic resolutions. Second, it warmed its business relationship with many independent developers who they rarely talked to in the past. Third, it paid attention to those customers that others don’t pay attention to — i.e., non-hard-core gamers.
While Nintendo did many things right, Sony did few things wrong. First, it pushed too much cutting-edge technology into PS3’s console development. Not only it hindered the mass production of PS3, but also it imposed new obstacles for game developers to produce games. Second, the design of PS3 failed to address the “fun” part of video gaming. It assumed all gamers enjoy complex game plays and sophisticated combo-moves. Third, the price of PS3 is too expensive for many causal gamers. Many parents are not willing to spend $600 on a video game console.
I’m glad to see Nintendo is able to have its comeback. Like Apple, Nintendo’s new success is driven by innovation in both technology and business.
Source: Putting the We Back in Wii
