It used to be that the posts here would follow the news cycle. That will no longer be the case. Generally, there is nothing new occurring on the console front. Aside from TGS, nothing new will appearing for quite some time. And what is new can likely be pegged in an earlier article. For example, the Wii router is no big deal. In “Finding Nintendo’s Shield”, I said that the third major element of Nintendo’s plan was online despite what the hardcore say. Nintendo has opened call centers to get people online with their Wiis in Japan. A router to make it easier to connect just follows that same course.
Microsoft and Sony have retreated from the Wii making this very boring. The reason why Microsoft and Sony are bringing out new versions of their console with bigger harddrives, instead of whittling down the price to $199 or so and THEN upgrading it with bigger harddrives is all about the next supposed ‘trend’.
The way how companies like Microsoft and Sony think is that they must get in front of the next huge trend so they can dominate in the future. If they have to lose money to position themselves, oh well. They thought High Definition video was that trend. Microsoft even called the seventh generation of consoles to be the HD Generation. Unfortunately, this trend has failed to materialize as the mass market is in not hurry to replace DVDs for Blu-Ray and their televisions for HD TVs. The Wii really shows people don’t care.
So the next trend Microsoft and Sony will pounce on will be the Internet Platform. The added harddrive sizes to their consoles is obviously due to downloading movies. But why movies? The plan is to be the entertainment of the internet. It is time to rethink the game console as instead of being a box that connects to your TV, it becomes a platform of the Internet itself.
Nintendo has no desire to go this internet platform route. Like the HD trend, the Internet Platform does have major costs for the platform company. It would turn Nintendo into a service oriented company instead of a product orientated company that it currently is. And Nintendo doesn’t want to do this for it would mean hiring thousands and thousands of new people. It would destroy the company.
If someone from Nintendo is reading this, realize that I read George Harrison’s quote about how it is part of Nintendo’s strategy to not defend itself but to let others do it for them (and this defense ends up being better than what the company would have put out). My concern is only to learn business tactics and strategy… all of which Nintendo has gone silent on since the Wii catapulted to success. And Nintendo’s actions have become extremely predictable lately… as have Sony and Microsoft’s. I’m coming to the end of my studies.
There is still 100+ pages of content coming. What I intend to do is finish what I am doing now and go several months with something new posted every Saturday (where all the game journalists disappear on the weekend) so there is something to read. I don’t know how long I could keep something up like that. Maybe 3-4 months?
2009 will be the year this website slows down and ultimately shuts down. After the upcoming super huge update, only one article will be left to do in the Disruption Chronicles page and every other page will be filled. The last page, Ludology section, will be all that is left.
Emails are also coming. i’m sorry I haven’t been on top of it.