Nintendo – Innovation Organization
Role R&D
Quoting from the Nintendo Annual Report 2012, the company strategy is the expansion of the gaming population, which is to encourage as many people in the world as possible, regardless of age, gender or gaming experience, to embrace and enjoy playing video games. Nintendo aims to expand their digital business by offering downloadable, paid add-on content, digitally distributing packaged software and so forth to adapt in environment changes surrounding the video game market and creating new business opportunities.
We can conclude from the statement that to survive in video game industry, Nintendo needs to be adaptive to the market change. In order to be adaptive, innovation is become day to
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It always has been Nintendo strength to combine their hardware design and internal software development teams. We can see the example of leveraging the strength when Nintendo DS launched in the market in 2004. The video game market in Japan and North America is slow at that time, but Nintendo successfully bring NDS to the market. The Nintendo DS contribute 40% of the total Nintendo sales in 2004 as being shown in figure below. Nintendo strategy is made the use of game console simple, unlike Microsoft and Sony with their much complex game console feature. Nintendo also made the intuitive interaction between gamer and video game to overcome the key barrier to consumption. The success of Wii is dramatically broadening the market and impossible to be ignored by their competitors. Microsoft and Sony responded by replicating some of its key element, most notably the intuitive motion-sensing game controller. Sony and Microsoft launched Sony PlayStation Move and Microsoft Kinect respectively. As shown in figure below, the market share of Nintendo begins to decline since then. The competitor is not the only threat for Nintendo, based on NPD report the trends of demand in game industry also change. Over the last 5 years, mobile gaming continues to grow. Nearly half of the
Nintendo has dominated the console market with their first handheld gaming device called Gameboy, having sold over 150 million units, and continuing to create more handheld ones. Games have also become easily accessible on smart phones, following the trend of portability. According to research conducted by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), 43% of gamers play games on their smartphones, and 25% play on a wireless device. Video game consoles have drastically improved since the 1970s, having become lighter, faster, and more interactive. All of these improvements were made possible by the advancements in hardware.
Nintendo’s strategy for pricing of consoles and games was to lock-in the network effects consoles offered by pricing them at- or below- cost and reaping profits by pricing video games at significant margin. Nintendo took these actions because it knew that if consumers used the NES/ Famicom console, they would be a captive audience for its higher-margin video games which were necessarily more perishable from a consumer taste perspective. This affected the value created by
• Every video game developer have good capability in faster processing speeds, digital and high-definition graphics capability and on line connectivity to develop new game or new game-playing device, by those way, they can easily to attract extended consumer.
Shopping, for example, has now become as simple as going online and selecting what you need from a list, and the company delivers your purchases to your front door. We are now able to go on virtual tours through existing buildings as well as those that are yet to be built. The most common and accessible of these interactive replacements is the Nintendo Wii. The Wii is a gaming console that has reached the point where is has wireless operation and reacts to and with human motion. Its games range from common play station gaming like world of warcrafts and tactical gaming, to fitness and sport orientated games and programs with which you can play virtual matches or have simple workouts.
After Sega went out of business with their last console, the Sega Dreamcast, there were only two developers creating consoles which was Nintendo and Sony. Microsoft saw an opportunity to make money and they had already had some experience in the video game industry with their help at Sega.
However, as the Wii’s target market is slightly different from that of either the Xbox 360 or the PS3, it is of less concern in the short-term. Nintendo’s dominance of female console gamers, however, is of serious concern. In 2008, the Wii outsold the PS3 and Xbox combined, indicating Nintendo’s strength in the market, as well as the growing eminence of female gamers as a target for game and console developers.
Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have been competing for a decade with Sony dominating the market throughout most of the years because of their superior technological products. The video games industry faces an entirely new rivalry situation. In 2008, Sony lost its strong position on the market, because of Nintendo’s success with their dynamic Wii over Sony’s high-tech PlayStation 3 and Windows’ Xbox 360. Although the Wii was technologically much less advanced than PS3 and Xbox 360, the Wii's cheaper price, ease of use, innovative motion-sensitive controller, and simple but fun games, made the console a hit all demographics from 9 to 65 years old, male and female. All these factors resulted in Nintendo’s Wii dominating sales and surpassing Sony’s by an impressive ratio of 2:1.
Future growth expectations for the Video Games industry have been significantly moderated, as the picture of the market for gaming on mobile platforms becomes clearer. Since mobile games are sold at much lower prices compared to traditional console and PC games, their rise may foretell a slowdown of the video game market in the United States. While the recent launch of the next generation video game consoles is expected to rekindle interest in the more expensive console gaming market, the rise of low-cost, low-margin mobile gaming market may weigh on the overall gaming market. Consequently, this is expected to pull revenue downward as consumers pay less per hour for gaming entertainment. Revenue is expected to reach $47.4 billion in 2019 as a result of the expanding population and an increased percentage of Americans
Both Sony and Microsoft focused their efforts on hard-core gamers and offering processing power and cutting-edge features to attract them. On the other hand, Nintendo has been trying to attract new customers that traditionally are non-gamers. The
Nintendo Company, Ltd is based in Kyoto Japan. They are recognized as being the "worldwide leader in the creation of interactive entertainment" (Nintendo, 2002, PG). Some of the world's best selling video gaming has come from the Nintendo Company, including Game Boy and Nintendo 64. In America Nintendo is based in Redmond, Washington. It is interesting to note that in American households nearly 40% have a Nintendo product.
The fifth and final force is that of the intensity of rivalry. This is the strongest force in the video game industry. Nintendo was very strategic in targeting an audience that Microsoft and Sony neglected. While Microsoft and Sony focused on the typical gamers, males ages 18-34, Nintendo focused on a broader audience “everyone” when creating their Wii. In the video game industry rivalry Microsoft and Sony are battling for the same market, while Nintendo has much of its audience all to itself. This is why
Branding research and execution company, Stealing Share echoes the idea that brand equity can be differentiated between primary brand and different platform brands. Their analysis highlights Nintendo’s successful attempt to invigorate waning brand equity with the departure from traditional game console design and acquiring of new demographics (Stealing Share, 2010). Their analysis goes further though in detailing that shifts amongst primary brand and secondary brand the difficulties faced by gaming consoles. This problem highlights brand equity as a necessity amongst consoles due to the proliferation of titles across many platforms and the losing proposition of “strategic pricing, speed to market and a wing and a prayer” (Stealing Share, 2010).
Nintendo however is not present in this new market and therefore it is very important to take in consideration to enter this new area because at the moment the company does not have products that satisfy those new needs resulting in the loose of sales and consequently revenues.
There is also a product system innovation. The two companies offer distinct products which when combined provide a more scalable product system. The bundling up of the Nintendo gaming characters with Universal theme parks will offer a product with more value. Such a partnership will open doors to significantly innovative theme park riding technology and immersive experiences of which both companies are famous
The main obstacle facing a start-up video game console company from entering the industry is saturation of the market from the larger video game console makers or the “big three” Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony. The big three tend to release new game consoles around the same time frame and compete head to head for sales. During the time frame it is impossible for a new entry to jump into the fray. 2010 was a banner year for video console sales Sony’s PS3 sold 14 million units followed by Microsoft’s Xbox 360 13 million and surprisingly Nintendo’s Wii led the big three selling 17 million units. After the 2010 release of all three consoles sales started to decline for each company. Nintendo took the largest sales loss at 72% in 2013 only 747,000 were sold compared