According to recent rumors, Nintendo NX will be less powerful than current gen (PS4), and be a handheld that can slide into a dock that lets you play games on your TV.
Hence, it seems to fulfill the criteria for a disruptive innovation relative to today’s high-end consoles (PS4 and Xbox One):
- It performs worse from the view of the core consumer (the hardcore gamer)
- It offers “good enough” capability (better than last gen but less than current gen) seen from most gamers’ perspectives (this is pure speculation on my part, but based on personal experience and talking with friends who used to be gamers, this seems to be true)
- It offers more convenience, and likely at a lower price. This is likely valued by a vast amount of “forgotten” gamers (again speculation since I haven’t studiet the market, but I believe this to be true)
Thus, form the non-core market’s perspective, the Nintendo NX seems to offer a better solution. Sony and Microsoft will likely pursue their best customers – the hardcore gamers – in order to avoid losing that lucrative market to each other. Nintendo will take the market who’s needs are currently over-served.
Because of this, I believe that Nintendo NX will create another Wii-like runaway success, and eat non-core market share from Sony and Microsoft.
Time to buy Nintendo shares!
(BONUS: Because traditional analysts and industry experts are embedded in the current value network – that of the hardcore gamers – they are likely to miss the potential of the Nintendo NX and deem it a hopeless endeavor. Thus, stocks are likely to be cheapest sometime in-between the official unveiling of the console, but before pre-orders are opened up 😉 )
2 responses to “Nintendo NX is a disruptive innovation”
Switch-presentation a couple of days ago. Nintendo’s stocks went down, just as predicted.
Time to buy and wait for the “disruptiveness” that the mainstream-market didn’t and can’t foresee.
Exactly as predicted. Stocks are booming.
Time to sell stocks 2-3 years after release, based on same pattern as Wii.
The reason Switch succeeded is because video game technology has switched over to the “good enough” side of the Clayton Christensen disruption diagram, at which time consumers start valuing convenience more than performance. In a way, it is also disruptive since this level of convenience opens up a new market that the other console vendors are just not interested in pursuing.