Sitting back and watching ‘smart people’ talk about the Nintendo business is very entertaining…
Very predictable, Screen Digest Piers Harding-Roll says that the recession will hurt the Expanded Market the most and boost the Core Market.
Screen Digest has been wrong entirely this generation. Let us not forget:
This image came out February of 2007. It is one thing to make the above prediction before the Wii came out. But after, it was obvious that a major impact was made with it.
Rolling’s prediction that the Expanded Market will just be hit the hardest and Core Market won’t be hit as hard rests entirely on the stereotype that Expanded Market customers are shallow and passionless while Core Market customers are dedicated and brimming with passion.
What will actually occur is that disruption will be further accelerated by a recession. Interest in video-games will rise, not fall, because video-games are cheap entertainment. For precedent, I point to the huge rise of pinball (video game’s ancestor) rising during the Great Depression. The masses will increase their gaming, not decrease because of an economic downturn. What really gets hit hard in a downturn is the entertainment for the non-masses. Opera, for example, gets hit. Theater in New York gets hit. Anything that is not for the masses will get hit hardest by a recession.
Core Gaming will be hit the hardest by an economic downturn. Why? Well, Core Gaming is much more expensive to make and has become more and more risky over the years. I doubt anyone will spend $100 million on a video game like GTA 4 did. Next Generation is always increasing in costs. But with their customer base stagnant and decreasing, a recession will likely knock the remaining legs out from Next Generation.
Used Game market looks pretty sweet during a recession. And Next Generation hates the used game market more than anything! So what we will see is Core Gaming steadily become more and more of a niche.
I do not, and Nintendo doesn’t, consider PS3 and Xbox 360 to be competitors to Wii. Wii is the New Generation.
Consider a timeline starting from the NES. The consoles kept getting more graphically rich and ‘faster’. Xbox 360 and PS3 are the zenith of this era.
While the DS hinted at what was to come, Wii is the mark of The New Era. A new timeline should be considered established with the Wii. Decades from now, Wii will be fondly, fondly remembered, just as the NES is now, and for being the ancestor to the great many new consoles to follow it. You better believe that every console manufacturer is going to study and emulate the Wii as much as possible. It is highly unlikely that the next Microsoft console will even be named ‘Xbox’ (I don’t think Sony will drop the Playstation name but they should).