Lost Garden: Nintendo's Genre Innovation Strategy: Thoughts on the Revolution'... - The Diigo Meta page

• 18 Mar 09
  

  Jason Nelson

  nintendo games business design revolution videogames

• 26 Jan 08
  

  thayoost

  game_design genres

  • Hardcore genre addicts easily pay for themselves. On average they are willing to spend substantially more on games than the casual or the fringe gamer. When a genre becomes standardized, there is literally an explosion of revenue that comes from successfully tapping into a uniform set of needs. This scalability is a basic attribute of software and is a major mechanic behind hit making in the game industry.
  • Nintendo makes the majority of their money by leveraging their brand recognition during the early to mid-stages of a genre’s life cycle. The power of the Mario character can establish a Nintendo game as an early genre king and help tap into a new market segment for great profit. However, as they get later into the life cycle, the standardization of the genre mechanics and the intense demands of the hardcore population reduces the power of the brand.
  • 2 more annotations...
  • • 
      Consider this tidbit. The Xbox, which focuses on highly mature genres catering to hardcore gamers has production costs of $1.82 million a title. The Gamecube costs half as much at $822,000 a title. The real kicker is that the Nintendo DS only costs $338, 286 a title to develop for, even less than the Gameboy. Some of these costs have to do with the hardware and development kits, but for the most part they are derived from the scope of the projects. Being able to develop successful titles at 1/5th the cost of your competitors is a major boost to your bottom line.
    • And this is exactly what Nintendo has done historically. The original Dpad, the analog stick, the shoulder buttons, the C-stick, the DS touch pad, link capabilities, the tilt controller, the bongo drums…the list goes on and on.
• 04 Nov 05
  

  Martin Koser

  BusinessModelInnovation

• 06 Oct 05
  

  arndis

  other

• 23 Sep 05
  

  greenbes

  Game Design

• 

  Robin Powell

  Very good essay on the life cycles of gaming markets.

  Gaming

• 21 Sep 05
  

  Marc Ordinas i Llopis

  game design

• 

  Joel Liu

  game innovation strategy

  • I’m still jet lagged from my recent trip overseas, but I managed to stay awake
    for the new Nintendo controller announcement. I must say that I’m feeling like
    an excited Japanese school boy waiting in line for the latest Dragon Quest.
  • I'm looking for mirrors since my little academic game design site is currently
    out of bandwidth as a result of all the interest. 40% of my monthly bandwidth
    was eaten in roughly 30-minutes. Sweet
• 

  Scott Koon

  Games

Would you like to comment?

Join Diigo for a free account, or sign in if you are already a member.