Nintendo Market Analysis

The very first ‘Video Game’ was invented by Edward U. Condon in 1940, At first it was a simple game called ‘Nim’. In nim players try to avoid picking up the last match. Thousands of people played it, although the computer won at least 90% of the games. Around ten years later in 1950, a new computer program was created by Claude Shannon for the game of chess. In autumn of 1972 the first gaming console was released by ‘Magnavox’ and they called it the Odyssey. Three years later, the next big gaming console arrived when Sears sold the first ‘Atari Pong.’ This was the beginning of a long partnership between Atari and Sears. This relationship lasted multiple years, and Sears sold several successful games. Multiple years later in 1985, Nintendo released the Nintendo Entertainment System. This new gaming console dominated the Gaming Industry and grew Nintendo’s Company. Nintendo created several gaming console legends, such as the Game Boy, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Advanced, Nintendo Gamecube, Gameboy Advanced SD, and Nintendo DS, all of which made a huge impact on everybody’s childhood from 1985 to 2005. In the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century Playstation and Xbox also started releasing consoles. They are still to this day making successful Gaming Consoles, and individual games, as well as Xbox and Playstation.

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

With innovation on his mind,Yamauchi branched out into a number of other, less lucrative endeavors, including an instant-rice company and a pay-by-the-hour “love hotel.” These disappointments led Yamauchi to the conclusion that Nintendo’s greatest asset was the meticulous distribution system that it had built over decades of selling playing cards. With such an intricate and expansive pipeline already in place, he narrowed his entrepreneurial scope to products that could be sold in toy and department stores and settled upon a new category called

The Nintendo brand has changed over the years, starting out as a simple card company that has expanded into the massive electronic giant we know today. They have had their ups and downs through their time as a gaming company but they always have the gamer’s interest in mind. As the late CEO of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata said, "On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer" (Yu, E., & Chan, W.

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.

I think this is because even though many people were interested in buying from Nintendo during the holiday season but as Nintendo is not releasing as much content as the major competitors in its field people are not as interested in it. On the same idea, Best Buy was my second worst performing stock starting at $45.86 and ending at $43.03. This is very likely due to the same problem, a peak during the holiday season but a sharp drop off after that due to people having just bought large amounts of gifts and not being willing to go back to the store, leading to a post holiday

The controllers are motion controlled, therefore it reads with your body motions along with being held in certain directions, all being read by a sensor bar that is placed above your television. Depending on a person’s height and placement of the sensor along with even just where your television is in your room, right down to the lighting, all affecting the sensor to make it just not read right. Causing you to have to move slowly to navigate anything from a game to just the home screen of the console. When you’re intensely focused on a game you do not want to move slowly, you want to be able to move freely, and just be able to react to anything. Another issue I always had with the Nintendo WII is trying to just find a good game. Most of the games are made for children or are family appropriate games. For a person who is really into gaming and is above ten years old, don’t get truly interested in the gameplay of these kind of games. These people like games with good action and stories that keep you focused and thinking. The games that Nintendo put out for the WII are just too simplistic. Then when you actually find the few games that are well known names you know that you like are end up hard to control properly. So than you try to mess with the apps that are provided with the WII and it always has a slow internet connection that causes the apps to glitch and take a long time to load. Trying to watch TV shows or movies on Netflix was always a nightmare with the WII.

You may be wondering where it all started, where it all came from. Well I have the answer you see it all started back in September 23 1889, a young man named Fusajiro Yamauchi opened a small store in the middle of Kyoto. He was very young (he only just turned 13) but he none the less was the first owner of Nintendo. He didn’t just go straight to games, and he didn’t want to be like any other shops selling normal everyday good such as silk and tea. He wanted to be unique and start selling a product that the government had just legalized. Can you guess what it is? That’s right nothing more than cards. But these weren’t just some ordinary card these where Nintendo cards as seen in picture #1. You can see how different they were sure there where

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.

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

In 1985, Nintendo test-markets it's Nintendo Entertainment System. It's a huge hit and goes nationwide the very next year. Because of its popularity, Sega releases the Sega Master System and Atari releases the 7800 game console. No one is as popular as Nintendo and in 1988; Atari sues Nintendo for having a monopoly. Atari of course lose. The video game war rages on to this day with many companies joining wanting their piece of the market. Atari was a main treat until 1996 when they merged with JTS and never released a game console again. Sega put up a good fight until their Dreamcast bombed in 2000, causing them to

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

By the end of 2006, two game console industry giants, Nintendo and Sony had launched their respective new products; the Wii and PS3. Various marketing strategies were implemented by both rivals and this writing attempt to analyse common and differing elements.

The role of technology is vital in this industry as it focuses on technological efforts for competitive advantage. Every new development uses new technology. Though there are restricted innovations in the gaming industry, the speed of technological transfer is very high. Nintendo’s role from playing cards to toys to video games and then with each console introduced, included many technological changes. Technological up gradation increased hardware costs and discouraged innovation. The online capability of Nintendo Wii was a major change in the technology of the video game industry though they were not able to do as well as their competitors (Sony, Microsoft).

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.