I wonder if the Wii and the DS are used as case studies in business schools. Smaller company playing a disruptive strategy against giant competitors.
I also think it's equally impressive how Nintendo always lived to fight another day... seems so many technology firms have one or two hits then get wiped out when a new product under-performs.
> Smaller company playing a disruptive strategy against giant competitors.
Although before that, Nintendo owned the games console industry, so it wasn't exactly a small startup. It had market-leading software franchises to sell its hardware.
> seems so many technology firms have one or two hits then get wiped out when a new product under-performs.
Absolutely true. It's one of the main reasons why the IBM PC (running DOS) and then openly-licensed Windows came to dominate the PC market rather than Acorn, Apple, Commodore (Amiga), Sinclair and hundreds of other proprietary manufacturers.
That was never a viable strategy in the games console market because most consoles were sold at a loss, ie software sales subsidized hardware sales.
Hardly. Nintendo was already one of the (if not the) major video game companies. Mario was a household name, they had hundreds of millions of games shipped, they made such massive hits as the NES, SNES, Game Boy, not to mention making literally dozens of celebrated timeless games.
It's a bit ridiculous to try to paint the picture of a small company upsetting the balance and applying the "disruptive" buzzword to 2000s Nintendo.
As for living to fight another day, well, that's the price of innovation. For every Wii, there is a Virtual Boy. For every Ocarina of Time there is a Phantom Hourglass. Not every bold move pays off, not every innovation is well received. Fortunately for Nintendo they never stopped innovating and taking risks. The times it paid comfortable offset the times it didn't (like the current gen Wii U). Besides that, they have extremely valuable IP they can cash on (Mario, Pokémon, etc).
1.Nintendo was a much 'smaller' company than Sony and Microsoft, who had many other businesses besides video games. The video games industry in the 2000s was far bigger than it was when Nintendo dominated it in the 80s and 90s.
2. The Wii is practically the definition of a 'disruptive strategy.' They stopped trying to compete on what was previously considered key (specs, AAA games) and instead focussed on adding a radical new dimension to gaming (motion sense controller).
I wonder if the Wii and the DS are used as case studies in business schools. Smaller company playing a disruptive strategy against giant competitors.
I also think it's equally impressive how Nintendo always lived to fight another day... seems so many technology firms have one or two hits then get wiped out when a new product under-performs.