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02/21/2006, 1:50pm, EST
Tuesday, February 21st
iPod inspires Nintendo's new products
Nintendo's sales and marketing VP admitted that the company is making decisions about its new products based on the concept that has driven the iPod's popularity. Reggie Fils-Aime is quoted in a recent gamesindustry.biz article, in which Fils-Aime notes the "disruptive" style of the iPod. The article says that the iPod interrupts "the standard progression of escalating technology by being more low-tech than [its] competitors, but innovating in terms of usability, pricing and broad appeal... it offers an end-to-end experience in hardware and software which is unrivalled by any competitor, which appeals to consumers far outside the gadget geek demographic." The company hopes that it can use some of the same paradigms that helped the make the iPod a success in its new DS and Revolution products, according to the article.
"The [Nintendo] DS is vastly underpowered compared to the [Sony] PSP, and the Revolution will boast a basic specification which will be dwarfed by both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. The company is banking on the idea that mass market consumers won't care; that just like the iPod completely bypassed the question of technical specifications by sporting an intuitive and innovative interface and a brilliantly integrated system for syncing music with your PC, the Revolution will dodge all questions of 3D performance or HDTV support by virtue of its brand new control system and simple, powerful online functionality."
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OK... so the premise here is that consumers will happily spend their hard-earned dollars on a third-rate system. A third-rate system that, if history's any indication, still won't have any version of "Grand Theft Auto". And research clearly shows that we're jonesing for yet another Mario title.
If this gem costs anything more than $100 and DOESN'T play DVDs, you can kiss Nintendo goodbye.
But one day Sony and MS are going to be charging $999 for their Stereo/Web browser/DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD burner/DVR/Toaster Oven, and charging $89 for that "Dead or Alive XXIV w/ Areola Zooming Technology" title that cost $40 million to produce. When that day comes, people might look at that $199 Nintendo console that was built to do one thing, and say, "maybe I should get that instead."
Saying it's third rate misses the point. There was nothing incredible about the original gameboy, or the gameboy advance. But they were fun, they had good content, and that's all that matters. If Nintendo gets its act together and gets some good games out there, they will be fine. Content matters.
Technology only matters when it makes new content possible. And 10,000 extra polygons in the next Madden isn't new content. Graphical improvements used to be amazing, now it's just getting numb. Buying a console because it had, say, a bigger hard drive or gigabit ethernet would be pretty stupid.
And business wise, Nintendo doesn't sell its consoles for a loss, unlike the others. They don't have to be #1 to keep survive.