IGN: Reggie Talks Nintendo's Future

This speech by Nintendo's Vice President of Sales and Marketing seals it. He's brilliant. He's finally saying all the things that the media and other game companies gloss over. Here's some choice quotes ...

The second book is "The Innovator's Dilemma." I actually had the opportunity to meet the author of this. The thinking is similar, slightly different bend. What this focuses on is the concept of disruptive technologies. There's a lot of examples in history that touch on this. The thought being that if you are a market leader, you focus on doing what you are doing a little bit better.

And then out of nowhere, some one comes with a disruptive technology and impacts your marketplace. A great example is one of our competitors. You look at how Sony was so focused on creating a better Discman, a better disc-playing portable device, MP3 players came out of nowhere and impacted their marketplace. And then, out of nowhere, came Apple with IPod and ITunes and further disrupted their marketplace.

Certainly Nintendogs is a great example in our view of a disruptive view in the marketplace. First, it is a game that isn't really a traditional game. It isn't win or lose. It is a type of thing that you pick up and play constantly, and the more you play it the more enjoyment you get; the more you play it and find other people playing it, the more enjoyment you get. It's only possible on the DS obviously, because of the touch screen and voice recognition. And on a worldwide basis it sold 2 Million units, against an installed base of about 8 Million. 24% penetration; that is huge. Absolutely huge.

On Ownership ...

Let's look at the install base for the last four generations. First thing to note: As recently as about a year ago, projections were made that the current generation would reach 60 Million household penetration: Ain't gonna happen. Ain't gonna happen. Another couple tidbits: So this chart is pure number of units sold. It doesn't take into account duplicate ownership, and doesn't take into account population growth. You overlay those two facts to get a percent population with a console in the household, and that's what it looks like. 8 Bit years, 31% of households had a gaming system. This year, where is going to end up? Somewhere between 31-32%. The growth we have seen has been driven by population growth, and by duplicate ownership.

Give yourself a treat and go read the whole speech. Nintendo has great stuff coming with the WiFi Connection ... including a "Live"-like service for Nintendo fans, hotspot locators, and other cool stuff. Maybe I'll finally be able to steal my DS back from Annie, who stole it to play MY copy of Nintendogs.

I still have to say that while hearing this sort of refreshing talk from Nintendo is wonderful, there's still places where they miss the mark. Nintendogs would have been even better if it used the whole WiFi Connection service, and not just local trading.