Birdman Shmirdman.

[Gaffer]

O.K......so we're now into the 2nd year of the Wii.
What started out as promising (Heatseeker, Red Steel.....) has turned into .....

.....nothing.

Where are the follow up big 3rd party AAA titles?
Where is Red Steel 2 for instance?
With this in mind, Ubidays arrived and a couple of AAA's were announced for the PS3/360 duo, and what did we get? Babiez and Dogz or other such sh** .

This is when the proverbial poo hit the rapidly revolving set of blades.
Over on the official Ubisoft forums, people complained about the fact that we're STILL getting shovelware, and if anything, the quality is worsening.
Unfortunately, Ubisoft seem to have takien a few leaves out of Sony PR machine and decided to insult and annoy Wii owners even further.
You can read the threads for yourself but the general stance from Ubisoft appears to be:

• The Wii isn't a proper console....it's for kids
• It's only worth developing games for HD consoles
• Ubi can do whatever they want, it's their company
• If you don't like it, tough, stop whining
• The insistance that 3rd parties should at least put some EFFORT into their games, whether "casual" or "core" is somehow not a valid point anymore
• All Wii owners are fanboys

^^This isn't just from the Ubi threads....the story had now spread to many other forums such as NeoGaf and VGChartz, and Ubi had responded by sending out Viral Marketers to antagonise people further (similar to how Sony handled the early PS3 debacle).

The argument from the Wii side was valid, we'd rather have no games at all than poor 4th team efforts that look even worse than N64 in todays day and age.........or better still, start putting out games dev'd by your first teams for a change.

Now, in amongst all this, quite a few people started quoting this link:

Birdmen and the Casual Fallacy.

It highlights MANY points I myself have made before and I pretty much agree with all of it.
Trawling through his site, the author also has many other interesting articles with quite a few insightful ideas thrown in.

Here are a few in summary:

• The Wii is not aimed at casual gamers....it's aimed at EVERYONE.
• Ninty aim to target the non-gaming demographic 1st, with casual-style games.....this is phase 1.
• Now that they've conquered the "indifferent gamer" market - Phase 2 has already started by focusing more on bridging titles (that both casuals and core gamers can play) such as MarioKart Wii.
• The final step is Phase 3 and will aim to bring the new market even further upmarket by concentrating more on core games (we've yet to get to Phase 3).
• The above strategy starts off as a "blue ocean" strategy with Ninty cornering the market with no competition - casuals, and then proceeds to continue with the "disruption" by gradually moving back upmarket in their games, thus dragging the new gamers with them.
• The Wii was not a "fluke". As early as 2001, they were saying that disruption would be their next business practise.
• As many 3rd parties either are unable or more likely are unwilling to face the concept of the Wii being a "disruptive" business model, they remain one step behind Ninetndo........as Nintendo move to bridging games, they're still sticking to casual ones.

The last point is important as maybe as the Big N starts moving through Phase 3 and releasing more and more core games, the 3rd parties will be latching on the bridging games and so on.....in which case, I predict that this year we'll see more of decent 3rd party offerings (e.g the calibre of Zak & Wiki and LostWinds) and next year maybe some bridge titles from 3rd parties?
In which case we can expect more AAA titles from 3rd parties during 2009/10?

Of course, I'm talking about "focusing on" rather than a 100% definitive "this is ALL I will make" type deal.......for instance, The Conduit looks like a AAA game to me.....from a small 3rd party dev, and that looks like it will arrive this year some time .


.....but I digress.....the main point of this thread is to point you all toward those "Birdmen" articles and see what you thought of them?
After reading through the article, do you agree or disagree with the gist of it?
Is Nintendo actively pursuing a "disruption" business plan....or do you believe the Wii was only a lucky fluke.

Remember, if it truly is disrupting the market, judging by how these things have gone in the past (e.g. iPod "disrupting" Walkman's market, Honda "disrupting" Harley Davidson's market in NA, etc etc) it's a safe bet that not only will Nintendo have sewn up this gen, but they may also dominate next (8th) gen too.

Whaddyareckon?

[Ed00wii]

Nice one.

I beleive the wii wasn't a fluke and Nintendo will progress, whether on their own or with others.

I do beleive, however that wii was slightly 'lucky' and that Nintendo where pleasently surprised. I think they had ideas which weren't expected to be so great, e.g. Endless ocean.

I think Nintendo's real step will be their next console. It's not luck having the DS and wii dominate markets, but we'll see how good their next movement is and base their success on that.

Nintendo is very experienced and wise - I'm sure something this big isn't just a lucky 'fluke'. I believe that the Gamecube could've been a 'decoy' before the real toys/ideas...

[Gaffer]

I agree. As mentioned, Nintendo were promoting Disruption tactics and hinting at their "Blue Ocean" strategy as early as 2001.

There are other articles at that Birdman site that back up your view that the GC was a "stop gap" whilst they formulated their new direction - and I would agree with that too .

What's amazing is that the software companies are quite slow on the uptake and remain one step behind Nintendo by still only producing casual games.....then they complain that they "can't compete with Nintendo".....well, no, not if they don't keep up they won't

[sherlockisback]

The most successful, longest lasting business look for the edge in the long term rather than the short term. Nintendo was down and out for many years as they formulated a response to Sony and then Microsoft's presense in a market they really had dominated for some time. Once Sega fell off the face of the earth, as it was successful but never on Nintendo's level, they breezed along easily.

However, their failure was the transition from cartridges to cds, as we all know. Once Sony reduced loading times on those, the cartridge was as good as dead. It always seemed like Nintendo never really forsaw the total collapse of the cartridge until it was too late, and this really dictated fast action to make up the difference. The result was Gamecube, a system that really lacked compared to its other counterparts.

[skyman747]

Hmmm, I thought Brawl would have entered phase 3, or is that considered phase 2. I guess it would depend on whether you are using strategy or just button smashing.

As always, great blog gaffer.