Gaming Consoles are for Playing Games; All the Rest is Flash
Well, well, well. “Window to the living room.”“If we build it they will come.” These phrases and others like them are the stock in trade of my friends over at Microsoft and Sony. Build a big, powerful, muscle-bound machine with a billion features and people will be willing to pay a premium price for all this added functionality beyond gaming. No, I said. People who buy gaming consoles want to play games. I’ve been writing about this for 10 months. Sure, online games are great. But HD-DVD, Blu-ray, etc., etc., etc., for $500, $600 bucks? I said “You’re limiting your market and strictly catering to the hard-core gamer. No, Microsoft and Sony said. You don’t get it. This is a long-term strategy. Our customers will get it.The problem is, according to a recent NPD survey, that they’re not getting it. Not at all. This from today’s ARS Technica:
The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles are marvels of technology. The
PlayStation 3 features a Blu-ray player, the ability to stream video
and music from your PC, and it’s a very impressive upscaling DVD player.
The 360 has a robust selection of movies and television shows you can
purchase and rent through the Xbox Live service, and with VGA or HDMI
connections it will also upscale your DVDs. For some gamers, these
functions go a long way towards justifying the high price of these
systems, but a new study from the NPD Group suggests that not only are
people not using these functions, they’re not even aware of them.********************
It’s apparent from the study’s results that one thing interests the
majority of consumers: games. The dueling next-generation HD disc
formats, the ability to download content, and even high-definition
graphics don’t seem to matter to the majority of the game-buying
public; if these figures are reflective of the wider market, all those
features are being roundly ignored by most gamers.When you take another look at the three next-generation systems
through this filter, it becomes obvious why the Wii is in such a
dominant position. It’s the least expensive system, and all the added
features that make the extra cost of the 360 and PS3 good values to the
plugged-in aren’t swaying the mainstream buying public. With constantly shifting hardware configurations, falling prices, and the HD DVD/Blu-ray
fight still going strong, Microsoft and Sony may be sending the message
that they’re too complicated for the average gamer, while Nintendo’s
game-first attitude and strikingly lower price point may be exactly
what the majority of console buyers want.
Doh! Not exactly what the pooh-bahs at Sony and Microsoft want to hear. Gamers want to play, what, games? Not to be an I-told-you-so guy, but here is what I wrote four months ago on this exact topic, building on my earlier thinking from last fall:
Fast forward to today. Both Microsoft and Sony are offering
super-premium versions of their products, more firmly cementing their
bets in the multimedia space. Hard-core gamers seem willing to pay for
the high-end graphics and extra functionality, but what about the
casual gamer? They seem to be much more in tune with the features,
functionality, usability - and price - of the Wii. Nintendo has clearly
struck a chord with the everyman, someone who just wants to step to the
plate, bowl a game, smash that serve or share with their friends.
Nintendo is about accessibility, ease of use, value and fun. Theirs is
not a holy war against a competitor, but a quest for understanding and
acceptance from their market. THE market. The market where you can sell
100 million consoles. The market that provides you with the foundation
to layer on additional features as technology costs continue to drop
and even more games are developed for the platform. Microsoft and Sony
are battling it out in the trenches. Nintendo isn’t playing their game.
Interestingly enough, they are clearly winning. Just look at the stock
price.
Sheesh. Kind of the way it has played out, huh? Now I know that the mucky-mucks at Sony and Microsoft will pooh-pooh this survey as they do most other forms of market feedback, but that’s ok. We know the truth. The market has spoken. The only question is, who is really listening? In one word: Nintendo.
