In the case study “Responding to the Wii?”, the story ends at 2008 when Kazuo Hirai, chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc, was contemplating the plan to reclaim the leadership in videogame console industry. In the class, many possible business strategies are taken out from the classmates, although sounds useless since the battlefield has been moved forward and the previous result is clear: Nintendo Wii wins the game of 7th generation of videogame console (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii), but Nintendo soon was lagged behind by his opponents at the 8th generation (Playstation 4, Xbox One and Wii U). Until 30th Dec 2016, the volumes of consoles for Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are 54 million, 20million and 12 million respectively.
The Failure of Wii U
Nintendo has laid the seeds of failure when naming and marketing Wii U, and the subsequent market reaction proves that the above problems are exactly the biggest mistake Nintendo made. In the era of Wii, Nintendo has won the game by Blue Ocean Strategy, which means, rather than drawing attention from hard-core players (male from 18–35), Nintendo extended the market to a larger scale, with Wii playing a role of fitness equipment, party and family entertainment centre because of motion control feature. This strategy is easily copied by Sony and Microsoft, and even the latter one brings a better controller — Kinect. Also, most consumers who buy Wii do not often pay attention to the development of the game market, resulting in the situation that, when the Nintendo Wii U was launched in November 2012, both retailers and consumers do not even know the Wii U is exactly what kind of product.
Designing factor, in the mean time, speeds up the falling of Wii U. The original concept of Wii is “simple.” As a somatosensory game console, the purpose of the Wii is to help the player exercise and maintain their body shape, so the shape of the Wii is very compact and mini, which is also suitable for Japanese consumers in the smaller living room. In contrast, Wii U’s design concept is more confusing. The controller for the Wii U is a control panel called the Wii U GamePad, which can be connected to a regular TV so that the player can either use the Wii U GamePad as a controller or use it as a game display (when the TV is off ). This means that players must always play Wii U GamePad within a radius of 26 feet, otherwise they will not be able to connect with the TV. The complex and “heavier” way of playing games stuck consumers, especially in local market of Japan where living area is relatively small.
With other historical problems like lack of “First-Party” games and weakness in hardware performance, and new market entrance-Smartphones and handheld game console, Wii U, unlike its predecessor, was seen as the most serious failure of Nintendo.
Bet on Nintendo Switch
Nintendo Switch is coming in 2017, which shares some innovative ideas from Wii U, but it is evolving to another level. The failure of Wii U makes Switch so successful, although Switch is still sluggish in graphic, its creative way of engagement and perfect games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey make this company shine again. To some extent, that might be the secret behind Nintendo: it will never make games like the BIOHAZARD 7 or NIOH on PS4 and Xbox One, all it pursues is the original fun of games that makes you relax and comfort, distinguishing reality from virtuality after loads of work and study. I do appreciate that and look forward to its future performance.
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