Nintendo, the Japanese video game console-manufacturing corporation, is one of the big players in the respected industry along with Sony and Microsoft. In 2006, when the competitors were following the industry norm to improve the product features, Nintendo began a new venture to target a new market with a new product that none of the competitors had. By combining virtual reality gaming features as well as the convenience of staying at home, Nintendo gave birth to the “Wii”. Today, they offer an updated version of this platform called “Wii U.” . It is said that Nintendo is expected to lose 240 billion dollars on sales in every category. Even the newest addition the Wii U, has not been doing so well and did not sell out in the market as …show more content…
We are strongly committed to producing and marketing the best products and support services available. We believe it is essential not only to provide products of the highest quality, but also to treat every customer with attention, consideration and respect. By listening closely to our customers, we constantly improve our products and services.” Nintendo has built up its reputation for decades with high quality products. Nintendo owes much of it’s success to it’s marketing strategy especially early in it’s development. The first Nintendo console to be offered in the United States was made available during a time when the video game market in the U.S. had just gone through a major decline. In the early 1980’s, American consumers typically associated video games with low quality products. The first Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was launched in Japan in 1983 and in response to the United States’ negative feelings towards gaming, was released to U.S. consumers in 1985. In order to effectively penetrate the American gaming market place, it required a well thought out marketing plan that would differentiate Nintendo’s product from the previous video games that had disappointed Americans so much.
The lack of consumer confidence in the United States was partially due to the misrepresentation of video games by marketers beginning in the 1970’s and into the early 1980’s. One of Nintendo’s marketing ideas was to make their box art
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
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.
However, the extent to which the hardcore gaming demographic dictates the structural aspects of the gaming industry as a whole is remarkable. Companies are still willing to cater to this audience because it is a profitable enterprise, as it is only the most devoted of fans who will line up days before a system release while generating free publicity on the internet and through word of mouth in the months prior. Thus, and perhaps unexpectedly, an important factor in the Wii's meteoric rise was Nintendo's ability, through the strength of its brand and residual nostalgia effects, to co-opt this hardcore gaming culture with a console that at best, only occasionally acceded to its wishes, while at worst, marginalized them completely. What Nintendo realized, and ultimately capitalized on, was that the hegemonic structure influencing the industry was inherently weak, in that it was essentially a small minority overwhelming the relatively silent masses. Although there are doubts to the sustainability of such an endeavor, the signs are present that the Wii has already altered the video game
They manufactured Nintendo entertainment system, Nintendo 64, GameCube, Nintendo switch and many more gaming consoles. They are known for various memorable games like Mario, The Legend of Zelda and Pokemon. Currently, they are also reducing the games for smart devices and they started it in 2015. They got huge success in smart devices with games like Pokemon go and Super Mario Run.
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.
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.
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.
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
launches in the history of Nintendo’s gaming industry since the product was also introduced in
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
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
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).
Strengths: One of the biggest strengths for Nintendo is their completely sensitive human resource issues.
When the NES came out Nintendo started a licensing company for third party games to produce their games in Nintendo factories. After the NES was created Nintendo redesigned the Famicom (the game cartridge) to look like a VHS tape to help grip the system grip it better. Also, the rarest game in NES history is the boxed version of Stadium Events, “but only a handful of boxed, complete copies have ever been seen in the wild, and they can fetch anywhere from $35,000-45,000 at auction” (www.usgamer.net). The best selling game in NES history was Super Mario Bros as it sold a total of 40 million copies (www.usgamer.net). Before the NES came along, Donkey Kong was the king of gaming. The reason for this is because arcades were the only way to play at the time. Luckily, NES games were playable in the arcades. Games like Ninja Gaiden and Super Mario Bros were stretched into the arcades by a system called Play-Choice10. In conclusion, the NES was part of a revolution in
I aimed to show my readers that the Nintendo Switch isn’t a good console and why it won’t succeed when it releases. The purpose is to steer the reader away from the Switch and make them less likely to buy it. To prove my point I use information from various “gaming” articles, economical statistics, and the opinion of the public (i.e. short interviews).