Now let us take a ride in Doc Brown’s DeLorean, reader. We go back to the year 2006, a little over a decade ago. Nintendo is considered a ‘failed company’ about to go out of business. PSP will eventually outdo the DS, and the Wii will sell worse than the Gamecube. Nintendoomed was everywhere.
And then appears this website which declares a new golden age for Nintendo. The spotlight is given to the new Nintendo president, Iwata. People wrote to me asking me why I am talking about a businessman and not just talking about Miyamoto. We talked about Blue Ocean Strategy and disruption. Nintendo’s marketplace fortunes have gone up and have gone down with generation 7 and 8.
I have always asked why I made this site. I wanted to learn more about business, and I wanted to turn my experiences of gaming into something more productive. Nintendo was a very mysterious company. Nintendo was very creative and very profitable, a rare combination.
I do admit I felt funny having a blog about a ‘video game company’. However, having a blog about ‘the richest company in Japan’ certainly does sound better!
I do laugh seeing these overpaid (and they ARE overpaid) analysts and investors trying to understand the console market especially Nintendo. These days, they just come to this website. It’s so funny.
One of the reasons for this site’s success, or rather, other sites’ failures, is they stay with the crowd. I got a friend of mine into Starcraft recently. He texted a friend of his, which is a big youtube personality, about playing some Starcraft. He got back the reply, “No one plays that old game anymore.” We are talking about Brood War here. Keep in mind, this friend of mine was discovering Brood War for the first time. The youtube personality only played games that the crowd liked because he wanted money and views which is all fine. But by living in the present, you get gobsmacked by the future.
“Malstrom,” says the snotty reader, “why you playing those 8-bit games? Why you playing those 16-bit games? Why don’t you play MODERN games? OMG.” I tell them they still matter, and the snotty reader thinks I am crazy old man taking nostalgia shots. Then Nintendo comes out with NES and SNES Classic Minis to have them all sell out again and again with people camping outside retailers for them. So yes, they do still matter in the marketplace today. Our overpaid analysts (so overpaid with their multiple ferraris) are completely stunned and confused by the sell-outs of the NES and SNES Classic Minis (and so was Nintendo it seemed haha). However, if you read this page, you would not be surprised at all.
The reason why the analysts couldn’t see the Wii coming is because they are not interested in gaming prior to the PlayStation. They don’t care about 16-bit, 8-bit, or Atari Eras. That is the Land Before Time. The Wii makes no sense in a post-PlayStation context of consoles. But the Wii makes perfect sense, both in its marketing and playability, if you knew the Atari Era or 8/16-bit Eras.
I don’t think the Switch makes sense to any analyst who didn’t truly understand the DS’s sweet spot. “What was this sweet spot,” asks the reader. “I too would to touch the sweet spot of the DS.” The DS, a handheld, found a sweet spot of being a semi-home console where you would just lounge around with it, playing whatever game, whenever you had any free time or when someone was using the TV. The Switch is occupying this ‘sweet spot’ now.
And it is about the games. It always is. Everyone talks console markets by trying to not talk about the games where they got it backwards. It is about the games first, everything else second. Compelling software drives hardware sales, NOT compelling hardware drives software sales.
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