UK_Resistance
Member
In this generation of console wars, GameCube came in third.
Nintendo, the company that re-launched and re-defined the video game business, has been battered in the console business and looks like it might be ripe for wreckage in handhelds.
The Situation:
As Microsoft entered the console wars, a lot of people asked, Can the market support three competitors? The answer seems to be, Yes, but the guy who comes in last always dies.
In 1986, Atari tried to compete with newcomers Nintendo and Sega. It didnt work and Atari wisely chose to sit out the 16-bit generation before committing corporate hari-kari in the form of Jaguar.
In 1989, Sega and NEC started the 16-bit generation with Genesis and TurboGrafx. Nintendo entered two years later, knocked NEC out of the way; and the U.S. market never saw another NEC console again.
Sony did the same thing to Sega in the next generation. Sega Saturn came in third placenot including 3DO and Jaguar. Sega did come back with Dreamcast, but no company that has come in third has survived the next generation.
4 In the current market, Nintendo has come in third place. Could Nintendo follow in the steps of Sega, 3DO, and Atari and go software only? With its many great franchises, Nintendo would be quite the hit as a third-party publisher. Only, isnt that what people said
about Sega?
The truth is that the Atari of today bears almost no relationship to the Atari of the eighties. The Atari of old was cut in half. Both halves have been sold and resold. The company currently known as Atari is really a French company called Infogrames.
After a long fight, 3DO ceased to exist. Sega, the company that once boasted it would supplant Electronic Arts as the number one independent publisher, never lives up to its potential. Without hardware to support, former console makers seem to give up their competitive drive.
So is Nintendo going to go the way of Sega and Atari? The short answer is, No., says John Taylor, managing director and analyst for Arcadia Investment Corp. Sega made a bunch of missteps. Sega had to deal with 32X, Sega CD, and a bunch of peripherals that confused consumers, ate up resources, and distracted management.
Granted, Nintendo has not released anything as notorious 32X, though Virtual Boy came close. On the other hand, with Game Boy Advance SP (Nintendo of America plans to discontinue the original GBA) and DS running side-by-side, the company does have two systems confusing consumers, eating resources, and distracting management.
And this muddle appropriately happens as Sony prepares to launch PSP. On the console side, its harder to imagine where Nintendo fits in now than it was 12 months ago, says Taylor. When asked, the clerk at a GameStop store in Hawaii said that his store had sold out of PlayStation 2 and Xbox. We still have GameCubes in stock.
Asked why he still had GameCubes, he stated that it was fine for a certain audience. Xbox and PlayStation 2 are better for 15- to 30-year-olds. Most of the people who come here are between 15 and 30.
The clerk said that DS was awesome, but hard to find. We only get six in per week. He suggested that I reserve a PSP, though he could not say what the price would be.
Calls to game stores in Washington, New York, and California produce similar resultsthough the clerks are seldom as friendly. So this is the situation. Nintendo has been marginalized in the console business. It will shortly face a most significant challenge its
portable business. Nintendo needs to make some fundamental changes. The following are steps Nintendo must take to prosper over the next 18 months:
1. Abandon the belle of the ball mentality.
Nintendo needs to abandon its former star of the show mentality and start acting like a company that knows its in trouble. The good news is that the Kyoto-giant has greatly improved one of its biggest weaknessesthird-party relations. The bad news is that Nintendos console sales are so low that even though they feel welcomed, many
publishers are not sure they want to jump on board with Nintendo. Nintendo has done a better job of working with third-party publishers, says Taylor. The third parties arent worried about the business model so much as they are about the GameCubes market
potential.
In other words, fewer people own GameCube, and those people seem to buy less software than PlayStation 2 and Xbox owners. Part of the problem is that Nintendo has abandoned the principles of service that made it such a force.
Nintendo is notably more harsh than Microsoft or Sony in its handling of smaller publications and fan sites. Right now, Nintendo needs to cultivate allies and advocates. In a society filled with opinion leaders, i.e. the Internet, Nintendo must court influential fans.
Along this same line, Nintendo needs to acknowledge the competition.
Nintendo executives say that DS and PSP were made for different audiences. The truth is that when customers walk into Wall-Mart or GameStop with $200, they are going to compare DS and PSP and choose one over the other.
And these annual shortages whats with that? Nintendo has a shortage of DS units. Do they think that is chic? They had similar shortages after the launches of GameCube, N64, and Super NES. You would learn how to manage inventory by now.
There is no logical reason for Nintendo to waste this window of time before the launch of PSP. Yet here we are. With PSP supposedly launching in three months, Nintendo is excitedly telling the press how they cannot keep up with demand for DS.
Why in the world are GameStop and Electronics Boutique stores, arguably the most influential chains in gaming, only receiving six DS units per week? They should be saturated with DS systems.
The Nintendo of old, the one that sold approximately 100 million NESs, simply tried harder. In the early days, NCL president Hiroshi Yamauchi personally courted third-party publishers. Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa met with store owners in New York and promised to buy back unsold merchandise and helped set up a few store displays. In order to regain market share, Nintendo needs to return to its former Avis mentality. It needs to try harder.
2. Forget the bottom line.
In 1990, Nintendo and the NES owned 93 percent of the U.S. console business. In 1994, the hottest year for 16-bit, the Super NES commanded approximately 48 percent of the U.S. market and ruled in Japan. By the end of the N64 generation, Nintendo was down to 33 percent of the American console market. With GameCube, Nintendo is down to
approximately 15 percent.
That is a nearly steady drop of 50 percent from one generation to the next.
The typical Nintendo response to this is something along the line of their console business always remaining profitable. Its a good and persuasive response. Even as Sony strangled Nintendo in all three world markets in the last year of the original PlayStation, Nintendo managed to make money with N64 while Sony leaked like a sieve. The problem is that if Nintendos share of the market keeps getting smaller, the next generation will not be profitable. There is another danger, toopeople perceiving Nintendo as a company
that does not care about its customers. Granted, companies are only out for themselves, but that does not mean they need to come across that way.
A few years back, Nintendo defined connectivity as meaning, You buy a $150-console, a $99-portable, a $10-cable, a $49-console game, and a $29-portable cartridge. That definition of connectivity sounded awfully self-serving.
3. Know your market and stick to it.
You could argue that Nintendo still has a defendable position with a certain demographic, says John Taylor. Taylor sees that demographic as the youth market, but the research does not necessarily agree. Recent surveys showed that the most desirable games for fourth and fifth graders were Halo 2 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Most 10-year-old boys want whatever games their big brothers want. What few 10-year-olds want is to look uncool. Wario games are not perceived as cool.
The Hawaiian GameStop clerk identified PlayStation 2 and Xbox as systems with games for players ages 15 to 30. He could not come up with a target market for GameCube, even when pressed. All he would say was, Most of our customers are between 15 and 30. As N64 faded and GameCube launched, Nintendo sent out the message that it was not just for kids. The problem is that none of the adult games that followed, Conkers Bad Fur Day, Perfect Dark, Eternal Darkness, and the Resident Evil series, sold well or
drove hardware sales.
Here, the analysts and experts disagree. Some people say that Nintendo needs to cultivate its position as the manufacturer of family-friendly video game systems. Nintendo cannot compete with Microsoft and Sony, said one reporter. Nintendo is like a company.
Others say that Nintendo can indeed change its stripes. Look at Cadillac, says Taylor. It used to be the car your grandfather drove in the suburbs. Now, with its change of image, Cadillac is the high-prestige car for urban drivers.
4. Americanize, Americanize, Americanize
The bottom has dropped out of the Japanese video game market. It shrank by one-third in 2001 alone. Japan, which bought the least hardware and the most software in the past, was the most profitable market in games. Now that the drop has occurred, North American is the most lucrative market.
Only one Japanese company made it into the U.S. markets top 10 games of 2003Nintendo. Nintendo had four games in the top 10two of which were Pokemon.
Cute, Fluffy, and Funny, words that describe so many of the best Japanese games, just dont appeal the way they used to. American audiences are into speed, action, violence. Americans like 3D adventures and first-person shooters. These are not big genres in Japan. Sports, other than soccer, are huge in the United States. Sports, other than soccer, do not sell well in Japan. Nintendo has one shooterMetroid Prime. The company has abandoned sports.
Nintendo needs to develop a Western-centric development network, says Taylor, and he is right. The problem is that with the admirable exception of Retro Studios, Nintendo seems content letting second-party partners like Rare and Silicon Knights slip away.
5. Keep doing what you do right
As angry and pessimistic as some gamers have become about Nintendo, other insiders believe that Nintendo is doing many things exactly right. Nintendo is listening to a good mixture of customers and game developers, says Richard Doherty, research director of
Envisioneering.
Had Nintendo read the reviewers and bulletin boards, the Pokemon series might have died two or three years ago. It didnt, and Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire both made it on to the NPD Groups list of the top 10 selling games of 2003. Fire Red and Leaf Green are among the top sellers of 2004.
Many reviewers complained about the cel-shaded look of the new Zelda game right up until the release of Wind Waker. Then they proclaimed it. Now Nintendo is effectively breaking the Zelda franchise into two separate lines with the adult Link in games with more realistic graphics and the young Link remaining in cartoon-like cel-shading.
Despite all of the criticisms, Nintendo still manages to do many things better than any other company in the business.
6. Stop with the mid-course corrections and hold to the basics
What did Sony and Microsoft do that was so brilliant with the launches of their first console systems? Nothing. But even when things went wrong, they kept to their game and that made a difference. Saturn smeared PlayStation during the launch window in Japan. The
following year, N64 out-launched both of them. Sony did not falter. Ken Kutaragi went right on making alliances, arranging exclusive games, and building an empire.
Sonys growth was insidious in Japan. First it was behind both Saturn and N64, then it was behind only N64, then it ruled the market. For two years after the launch of Xbox, people joked that Xbox should be called the Halo Delivery System. But Microsoft remained
steady. Microsoft executives arranged exclusive deals with unlikely partners such as Tecmo and Ubi Soft. Games continued to look better on Xbox. More recently, Microsoft broke Sonys stranglehold on online support from EA Sports.
Sony may have sold more hardware in this generation, but Microsoft ended the generation with the chic factor.
Sony has always said that it pandered to the Playboy crowdnot meaning Playboy readers, but rather suggesting that sophisticated and older demographic. Microsoft said it was going after a tech-savvy crowd. Even when Sony executives publicly berated their counterparts at Microsoft, both companies stayed the course.
And Nintendo? Nintendo has bounced around. First GameCube was the safe system for kids, then it grew up and competed with Sony and Microsoft, only to become a system children and parents could trust. The same thing has happened with GBA. First GBA SPs clamshell design was to make it more adult-friendly. Then DS materialized, and GBA SP turns out to have been a kids system all along. Nintendo needs to pick a strategy and stick to it; and in no area is that more important than in handhelds.
7. Either do Revolution right or dont do Revolution at all
In the end, Nintendo is going to need to make a stand. Executives at both Sony and Microsoft have made comments about Nintendo owning the handheld market. Now Sony has invaded that space. Microsoft may still follow.
Nintendo should make its stand with Revolution. To do this, Nintendo needs to do a lot of things right from the start.
First, its time for Nintendo to discover the Internet. In Kyoto, just like the rest of the world, people access to the Internet and for more than a game of Phantasy Star Online. Nintendo executives admit that not adding DVD capability to GameCube hurt them, its to
make the same admission with the Internet. People may not use Xbox Live, but they want the option.
Next, its time for Nintendo executives to listen to what their customers tell them. People like pretty graphics. People want the same games with better graphics. Nintendo executives say they want Revolution to be as revolutionary as DS. Fine, but make sure the graphics are hugely improved.
Not everyone agrees with this. Richard Doherty compliments Nintendo for not trying to create a super computer in a $300 game box. This, he says, is what will separate Nintendo from Microsoft and Sony. But if Microsoft and Sony are successful, that separation may not be good.
The truth is that if good old Madden NFL looks better and plays better on PlayStation 3 and NextBox, Maddeneers are going to buy those systems. And, for the record, Madden NFL 2004 was the best selling game of 2003.
The best of all worlds would be for Nintendo to join forces with Microsoft. Nintendo would handle Japan, Microsoft would launch in the United States. Microsoft would make the box, Nintendo would make the controller. Software would be shared.
Since that is not going to happen, Nintendo needs to launch on time with good software and a strong proprietary library. If Microsoft launches in 2005, Nintendo should launch in 2005 as well. Do not pull a Dreamcast/3DO and come out too early, but do not allow the competition a one-year head start. Contrary to what former Nintendo VP Peter Main
said in his final press conference, there is no benefit in coming last to the party.
Finally Nintendo needs to have enough hardware at launch. Avoid shortagesreal or trumped upand fill the channel.
Nintendo can still recapture much its former glory, even in this competitive marketplace. If the Red Socks can break their 50-year curse, Nintendo can break out. What Nintendo cannot do is continue to make the same old mistakes and survive.
http://www.vgtm.com
Nintendo, the company that re-launched and re-defined the video game business, has been battered in the console business and looks like it might be ripe for wreckage in handhelds.
The Situation:
As Microsoft entered the console wars, a lot of people asked, Can the market support three competitors? The answer seems to be, Yes, but the guy who comes in last always dies.
In 1986, Atari tried to compete with newcomers Nintendo and Sega. It didnt work and Atari wisely chose to sit out the 16-bit generation before committing corporate hari-kari in the form of Jaguar.
In 1989, Sega and NEC started the 16-bit generation with Genesis and TurboGrafx. Nintendo entered two years later, knocked NEC out of the way; and the U.S. market never saw another NEC console again.
Sony did the same thing to Sega in the next generation. Sega Saturn came in third placenot including 3DO and Jaguar. Sega did come back with Dreamcast, but no company that has come in third has survived the next generation.
4 In the current market, Nintendo has come in third place. Could Nintendo follow in the steps of Sega, 3DO, and Atari and go software only? With its many great franchises, Nintendo would be quite the hit as a third-party publisher. Only, isnt that what people said
about Sega?
The truth is that the Atari of today bears almost no relationship to the Atari of the eighties. The Atari of old was cut in half. Both halves have been sold and resold. The company currently known as Atari is really a French company called Infogrames.
After a long fight, 3DO ceased to exist. Sega, the company that once boasted it would supplant Electronic Arts as the number one independent publisher, never lives up to its potential. Without hardware to support, former console makers seem to give up their competitive drive.
So is Nintendo going to go the way of Sega and Atari? The short answer is, No., says John Taylor, managing director and analyst for Arcadia Investment Corp. Sega made a bunch of missteps. Sega had to deal with 32X, Sega CD, and a bunch of peripherals that confused consumers, ate up resources, and distracted management.
Granted, Nintendo has not released anything as notorious 32X, though Virtual Boy came close. On the other hand, with Game Boy Advance SP (Nintendo of America plans to discontinue the original GBA) and DS running side-by-side, the company does have two systems confusing consumers, eating resources, and distracting management.
And this muddle appropriately happens as Sony prepares to launch PSP. On the console side, its harder to imagine where Nintendo fits in now than it was 12 months ago, says Taylor. When asked, the clerk at a GameStop store in Hawaii said that his store had sold out of PlayStation 2 and Xbox. We still have GameCubes in stock.
Asked why he still had GameCubes, he stated that it was fine for a certain audience. Xbox and PlayStation 2 are better for 15- to 30-year-olds. Most of the people who come here are between 15 and 30.
The clerk said that DS was awesome, but hard to find. We only get six in per week. He suggested that I reserve a PSP, though he could not say what the price would be.
Calls to game stores in Washington, New York, and California produce similar resultsthough the clerks are seldom as friendly. So this is the situation. Nintendo has been marginalized in the console business. It will shortly face a most significant challenge its
portable business. Nintendo needs to make some fundamental changes. The following are steps Nintendo must take to prosper over the next 18 months:
1. Abandon the belle of the ball mentality.
Nintendo needs to abandon its former star of the show mentality and start acting like a company that knows its in trouble. The good news is that the Kyoto-giant has greatly improved one of its biggest weaknessesthird-party relations. The bad news is that Nintendos console sales are so low that even though they feel welcomed, many
publishers are not sure they want to jump on board with Nintendo. Nintendo has done a better job of working with third-party publishers, says Taylor. The third parties arent worried about the business model so much as they are about the GameCubes market
potential.
In other words, fewer people own GameCube, and those people seem to buy less software than PlayStation 2 and Xbox owners. Part of the problem is that Nintendo has abandoned the principles of service that made it such a force.
Nintendo is notably more harsh than Microsoft or Sony in its handling of smaller publications and fan sites. Right now, Nintendo needs to cultivate allies and advocates. In a society filled with opinion leaders, i.e. the Internet, Nintendo must court influential fans.
Along this same line, Nintendo needs to acknowledge the competition.
Nintendo executives say that DS and PSP were made for different audiences. The truth is that when customers walk into Wall-Mart or GameStop with $200, they are going to compare DS and PSP and choose one over the other.
And these annual shortages whats with that? Nintendo has a shortage of DS units. Do they think that is chic? They had similar shortages after the launches of GameCube, N64, and Super NES. You would learn how to manage inventory by now.
There is no logical reason for Nintendo to waste this window of time before the launch of PSP. Yet here we are. With PSP supposedly launching in three months, Nintendo is excitedly telling the press how they cannot keep up with demand for DS.
Why in the world are GameStop and Electronics Boutique stores, arguably the most influential chains in gaming, only receiving six DS units per week? They should be saturated with DS systems.
The Nintendo of old, the one that sold approximately 100 million NESs, simply tried harder. In the early days, NCL president Hiroshi Yamauchi personally courted third-party publishers. Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa met with store owners in New York and promised to buy back unsold merchandise and helped set up a few store displays. In order to regain market share, Nintendo needs to return to its former Avis mentality. It needs to try harder.
2. Forget the bottom line.
In 1990, Nintendo and the NES owned 93 percent of the U.S. console business. In 1994, the hottest year for 16-bit, the Super NES commanded approximately 48 percent of the U.S. market and ruled in Japan. By the end of the N64 generation, Nintendo was down to 33 percent of the American console market. With GameCube, Nintendo is down to
approximately 15 percent.
That is a nearly steady drop of 50 percent from one generation to the next.
The typical Nintendo response to this is something along the line of their console business always remaining profitable. Its a good and persuasive response. Even as Sony strangled Nintendo in all three world markets in the last year of the original PlayStation, Nintendo managed to make money with N64 while Sony leaked like a sieve. The problem is that if Nintendos share of the market keeps getting smaller, the next generation will not be profitable. There is another danger, toopeople perceiving Nintendo as a company
that does not care about its customers. Granted, companies are only out for themselves, but that does not mean they need to come across that way.
A few years back, Nintendo defined connectivity as meaning, You buy a $150-console, a $99-portable, a $10-cable, a $49-console game, and a $29-portable cartridge. That definition of connectivity sounded awfully self-serving.
3. Know your market and stick to it.
You could argue that Nintendo still has a defendable position with a certain demographic, says John Taylor. Taylor sees that demographic as the youth market, but the research does not necessarily agree. Recent surveys showed that the most desirable games for fourth and fifth graders were Halo 2 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Most 10-year-old boys want whatever games their big brothers want. What few 10-year-olds want is to look uncool. Wario games are not perceived as cool.
The Hawaiian GameStop clerk identified PlayStation 2 and Xbox as systems with games for players ages 15 to 30. He could not come up with a target market for GameCube, even when pressed. All he would say was, Most of our customers are between 15 and 30. As N64 faded and GameCube launched, Nintendo sent out the message that it was not just for kids. The problem is that none of the adult games that followed, Conkers Bad Fur Day, Perfect Dark, Eternal Darkness, and the Resident Evil series, sold well or
drove hardware sales.
Here, the analysts and experts disagree. Some people say that Nintendo needs to cultivate its position as the manufacturer of family-friendly video game systems. Nintendo cannot compete with Microsoft and Sony, said one reporter. Nintendo is like a company.
Others say that Nintendo can indeed change its stripes. Look at Cadillac, says Taylor. It used to be the car your grandfather drove in the suburbs. Now, with its change of image, Cadillac is the high-prestige car for urban drivers.
4. Americanize, Americanize, Americanize
The bottom has dropped out of the Japanese video game market. It shrank by one-third in 2001 alone. Japan, which bought the least hardware and the most software in the past, was the most profitable market in games. Now that the drop has occurred, North American is the most lucrative market.
Only one Japanese company made it into the U.S. markets top 10 games of 2003Nintendo. Nintendo had four games in the top 10two of which were Pokemon.
Cute, Fluffy, and Funny, words that describe so many of the best Japanese games, just dont appeal the way they used to. American audiences are into speed, action, violence. Americans like 3D adventures and first-person shooters. These are not big genres in Japan. Sports, other than soccer, are huge in the United States. Sports, other than soccer, do not sell well in Japan. Nintendo has one shooterMetroid Prime. The company has abandoned sports.
Nintendo needs to develop a Western-centric development network, says Taylor, and he is right. The problem is that with the admirable exception of Retro Studios, Nintendo seems content letting second-party partners like Rare and Silicon Knights slip away.
5. Keep doing what you do right
As angry and pessimistic as some gamers have become about Nintendo, other insiders believe that Nintendo is doing many things exactly right. Nintendo is listening to a good mixture of customers and game developers, says Richard Doherty, research director of
Envisioneering.
Had Nintendo read the reviewers and bulletin boards, the Pokemon series might have died two or three years ago. It didnt, and Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire both made it on to the NPD Groups list of the top 10 selling games of 2003. Fire Red and Leaf Green are among the top sellers of 2004.
Many reviewers complained about the cel-shaded look of the new Zelda game right up until the release of Wind Waker. Then they proclaimed it. Now Nintendo is effectively breaking the Zelda franchise into two separate lines with the adult Link in games with more realistic graphics and the young Link remaining in cartoon-like cel-shading.
Despite all of the criticisms, Nintendo still manages to do many things better than any other company in the business.
6. Stop with the mid-course corrections and hold to the basics
What did Sony and Microsoft do that was so brilliant with the launches of their first console systems? Nothing. But even when things went wrong, they kept to their game and that made a difference. Saturn smeared PlayStation during the launch window in Japan. The
following year, N64 out-launched both of them. Sony did not falter. Ken Kutaragi went right on making alliances, arranging exclusive games, and building an empire.
Sonys growth was insidious in Japan. First it was behind both Saturn and N64, then it was behind only N64, then it ruled the market. For two years after the launch of Xbox, people joked that Xbox should be called the Halo Delivery System. But Microsoft remained
steady. Microsoft executives arranged exclusive deals with unlikely partners such as Tecmo and Ubi Soft. Games continued to look better on Xbox. More recently, Microsoft broke Sonys stranglehold on online support from EA Sports.
Sony may have sold more hardware in this generation, but Microsoft ended the generation with the chic factor.
Sony has always said that it pandered to the Playboy crowdnot meaning Playboy readers, but rather suggesting that sophisticated and older demographic. Microsoft said it was going after a tech-savvy crowd. Even when Sony executives publicly berated their counterparts at Microsoft, both companies stayed the course.
And Nintendo? Nintendo has bounced around. First GameCube was the safe system for kids, then it grew up and competed with Sony and Microsoft, only to become a system children and parents could trust. The same thing has happened with GBA. First GBA SPs clamshell design was to make it more adult-friendly. Then DS materialized, and GBA SP turns out to have been a kids system all along. Nintendo needs to pick a strategy and stick to it; and in no area is that more important than in handhelds.
7. Either do Revolution right or dont do Revolution at all
In the end, Nintendo is going to need to make a stand. Executives at both Sony and Microsoft have made comments about Nintendo owning the handheld market. Now Sony has invaded that space. Microsoft may still follow.
Nintendo should make its stand with Revolution. To do this, Nintendo needs to do a lot of things right from the start.
First, its time for Nintendo to discover the Internet. In Kyoto, just like the rest of the world, people access to the Internet and for more than a game of Phantasy Star Online. Nintendo executives admit that not adding DVD capability to GameCube hurt them, its to
make the same admission with the Internet. People may not use Xbox Live, but they want the option.
Next, its time for Nintendo executives to listen to what their customers tell them. People like pretty graphics. People want the same games with better graphics. Nintendo executives say they want Revolution to be as revolutionary as DS. Fine, but make sure the graphics are hugely improved.
Not everyone agrees with this. Richard Doherty compliments Nintendo for not trying to create a super computer in a $300 game box. This, he says, is what will separate Nintendo from Microsoft and Sony. But if Microsoft and Sony are successful, that separation may not be good.
The truth is that if good old Madden NFL looks better and plays better on PlayStation 3 and NextBox, Maddeneers are going to buy those systems. And, for the record, Madden NFL 2004 was the best selling game of 2003.
The best of all worlds would be for Nintendo to join forces with Microsoft. Nintendo would handle Japan, Microsoft would launch in the United States. Microsoft would make the box, Nintendo would make the controller. Software would be shared.
Since that is not going to happen, Nintendo needs to launch on time with good software and a strong proprietary library. If Microsoft launches in 2005, Nintendo should launch in 2005 as well. Do not pull a Dreamcast/3DO and come out too early, but do not allow the competition a one-year head start. Contrary to what former Nintendo VP Peter Main
said in his final press conference, there is no benefit in coming last to the party.
Finally Nintendo needs to have enough hardware at launch. Avoid shortagesreal or trumped upand fill the channel.
Nintendo can still recapture much its former glory, even in this competitive marketplace. If the Red Socks can break their 50-year curse, Nintendo can break out. What Nintendo cannot do is continue to make the same old mistakes and survive.
http://www.vgtm.com
