Is Nintendo still lack of creativity? 2DS launched after 3DS with removing 3D function...

After finishing reading the Nintendo case, I have done some background checks to see where did the company go to win the consumers back. I have to admit this topic has nothing to do with the assignment, but just personal curiosity on the gaming market.
According to the news, without 3D function, 2DS is just a entry-level game player with some simple games like Mario, etc. Nintendo had made a U-turn in its product roadmap. Would this move draw the original Nintendo fans' attention? I'm not playing a lot of those handheld games, but it looks to me that Nintendo is still lack of creativity on new product development. I guess Nintendo wants to stick with its core competence which as I conclude could be those old games like Mario, Pokemon, etc. Is it TRUE that people still wanna play those classic games? I hope I can get the answers from the players who had really tested on 2DS.

I have to say 2DS is a rubbish.

I am afraid that their market research is not perfect, I don't believe 3DS's failure can be attributed to 3D tech.

Wii is the best game handheld control ever, but after that, Nintendo have no better product and Apple did a very good job...

2013960675 Leon Zhu GB wrote:Wii is the best game handheld control ever, but after that, Nintendo have no better product and Apple did a very good job...

I think Wii and Apple are not direct competitor currently. They are different positioning. Wii's major competitor is Kinect

Gunpei Yokoi admired what we called "Withered technology" so much and inspired him to the research and development of the Nintendo hardare development when he was still in Nintendo back to 1990s. I belive current leads inherited his legacy.
 
The definition of "Withered technology" can be interpretated into
Using a bit outdated technology and applied onto new hardware with "creative ideas driven" revision.
 
That is exactly what they did in wii, if you just look into the development tool, you will be very surprised to find that from the software level, the tool is exactly the same as N64!!!
 
Same thing for 3ds and 2ds. If we overlook their stratety as a whole for handheld market, you will found that 2ds is a perfect compensation for 3ds. Before 2ds was released, let's take a look at their lineup, they have 3ds, they have 3dsLL. when they released 2ds, someone will feel quite amused for their strategy. But if you just take a second thought, you will find something you may neglect before.
 
1. 2ds was targeted exactly to customers aging from 5-7.
2. 2ds is targeted mainly for west market, which is more sensitive to the price, as we traditionly knew.
3. The new version only priced 129 US dollars,which is 50 US dollars cheaper than the 3ds.
4. 2ds removed the naked eye 3d image function, which was reported before may harm the child's eyesight, so the parents will feel more comfortable when they purchase this product as a gift for their kids.
 
So from my point of view, the conclusion is quite simple.
 
1. Releasing 2ds is not a big move for Nintendo, it is quite obvious that the research budget for this new model is extremely low.
2. It is a compensation for the previous lineup.
2. It is their tradition for Nintendo to apply outdated technology onto new product, sometimes it is just carefully(trickly) wrapped by camouflage, PR and market campaign, and normal customer can't see through.
3. The price is very attractive
4. The target customer group is clear.
 
Nintendo has the ability to turn rubbish into attractive shinning things, please do not doubt that. The last thing they are lacking of is the creative ideas.
 
Nintendo will live and live well though experiencing some bumpy in the past 2-3 years. Maybe it is a bit unique company compared with MS and SONY. When you have doubts, please change a perspective and by understanding deeply from their history and legacy.

I have to apologize that I did not read the documents in the first place. All the contents I wrote above is just my first response to the topic.
So please do not hesitate to correct me if any of my point and statistics are wrong.

YinyijiaGB wrote:Gunpei Yokoi admired what we called "Withered technology" so much and inspired him to the research and development of the Nintendo hardare development when he was still in Nintendo back to 1990s. I belive current leads inherited his legacy.
 
The definition of "Withered technology" can be interpretated into
Using a bit outdated technology and applied onto new hardware with "creative ideas driven" revision.
 
That is exactly what they did in wii, if you just look into the development tool, you will be very surprised to find that from the software level, the tool is exactly the same as N64!!!
 
Same thing for 3ds and 2ds. If we overlook their stratety as a whole for handheld market, you will found that 2ds is a perfect compensation for 3ds. Before 2ds was released, let's take a look at their lineup, they have 3ds, they have 3dsLL. when they released 2ds, someone will feel quite amused for their strategy. But if you just take a second thought, you will find something you may neglect before.
 
1. 2ds was targeted exactly to customers aging from 5-7.
2. 2ds is targeted mainly for west market, which is more sensitive to the price, as we traditionly knew.
3. The new version only priced 129 US dollars,which is 50 US dollars cheaper than the 3ds.
4. 2ds removed the naked eye 3d image function, which was reported before may harm the child's eyesight, so the parents will feel more comfortable when they purchase this product as a gift for their kids.
 
So from my point of view, the conclusion is quite simple.
 
1. Releasing 2ds is not a big move for Nintendo, it is quite obvious that the research budget for this new model is extremely low.
2. It is a compensation for the previous lineup.
2. It is their tradition for Nintendo to apply outdated technology onto new product, sometimes it is just carefully(trickly) wrapped by camouflage, PR and market campaign, and normal customer can't see through.
3. The price is very attractive
4. The target customer group is clear.
 
Nintendo has the ability to turn rubbish into attractive shinning things, please do not doubt that. The last thing they are lacking of is the creative ideas.
 
Nintendo will live and live well though experiencing some bumpy in the past 2-3 years. Maybe it is a bit unique company compared with MS and SONY. When you have doubts, please change a perspective and by understanding deeply from their history and legacy.

I have to apologize that I did not read the documents in the first place. All the contents I wrote above is just my first response to the topic.
So please do not hesitate to correct me if any of my point and statistics are wrong.

I agree that 2DS is the compensation for 3DS, however, Nintendo does not clear the market trend. Handheld games are being replaced by mobile games, even the cost is low, there's no need to release a product that it is expected to fail at the beginning.
Besides, as you said 2DS is targeting kids below 7, nevertheless, the buyer are not kids, they are parents. You need to analyze the parents' preference, not the kids.

No offense, but all of your arguement is from Nintendo's angle, e.g.: they think it's targeting kids 5-7, they think blahblah...
Not from consumers angle. e.g.: Do kids between 5-7 really love this product? Do parents prefer 2DS rather than iPad? Why do you think parents are willing to pay 129 USD for a 6-year old kid just for a handheld game device?
Even more, why do you believe what in case is correct? 3D does harm to kids eyes, but I believe it's not the only reason that 3DS's sales perform poor.

PS: a small question. western market is sensitive to price? I thought it was eastern market, such as China?

I did not organize the passage structure very well, it is written in a hurry, apologize for that first. In game industry, you have to create needs. customers sometimes have no idea what they want.

Take a very simple example, the year when Nintendo announced that they will release Wii, and after have brief introduction for this new device. Most media will have doubts, "what the hell is that device"? But when you actually in that year's E3, in the hall, near the booth, see how the players bring doubts in this expo in the first place and then begin to wave the wii controller and then gradually you see smiles and joys on the face. I truly knew deeper on the definition of the word "creativity"

Nintendo has very weak technology base, compared with the 2 giants, Microsoft, and SONY, if he fellows their steps, the failure will come very soon. He has to be unique to survive, I mean very unique! (In chinese, it called “剑走偏锋”) just like a gambler, making risks, doing something seems stupid in the first place. N64 failed, WiiU failed, but Wii did succeed, and that is truly a huge success. Specifically on this fact itself, it is done not by market research, or by common predict, if that is the case, MS and SONY will do the exactly same thing.

This is the option choose to die hard(huge success) or die slow.

Regarding the price issue. I did not think right in the first place. Just forget that. Sorry!

YinyijiaGB wrote:I did not organize the passage structure very well, it is written in a hurry, apologize for that first. In game industry, you have to create needs. customers sometimes have no idea what they want.

Take a very simple example, the year when Nintendo announced that they will release Wii, and after have brief introduction for this new device. Most media will have doubts, "what the hell is that device"? But when you actually in that year's E3, in the hall, near the booth, see how the players bring doubts in this expo in the first place and then begin to wave the wii controller and then gradually you see smiles and joys on the face. I truly knew deeper on the definition of the word "creativity"

Nintendo has very weak technology base, compared with the 2 giants, Microsoft, and SONY, if he fellows their steps, the failure will come very soon. He has to be unique to survive, I mean very unique! (In chinese, it called “剑走偏锋”) just like a gambler, making risks, doing something seems stupid in the first place. N64 failed, WiiU failed, but Wii did succeed, and that is truly a huge success. Specifically on this fact itself, it is done not by market research, or by common predict, if that is the case, MS and SONY will do the exactly same thing.

This is the option choose to die hard(huge success) or die slow.

Regarding the price issue. I did not think right in the first place. Just forget that. Sorry!

I agree with your unique. But I am afraid, unique needs luck, not all the company can survive in unique style.
Most important, to survive with this "unique", the leader must be "unique", e.g.: Steve Jobs.
I don't think current Nintendo has such ability and leadership.

Besides, do you think 2DS is unique? there's nothing unique in 2DS, it's mainly a low-end 3DS, similar to PSP. Please give me a reason to choose 2DS, or please introduce me its core competence.

I am not sure whether Wii is the best game handheld control ever, but Nintendo did make a very good value from Wii, they did start an era of be a part of game rather than play the game. But the technology glow so fast, it did not take long to replace the handheld with motion capture, like Kinect, or the upcoming DualShock 4 come with PS4. I believe in the future there will be more new technology to give better game experience, so continues creative idea is needed to survive. I believe there are two kinds of game equipment in the future:

1. The latest technology give the best ever game experience
2. Portable game equipment integrated into equipment which already become something most people cannot live without—the cell phone.

The first kind will continue to develop, new technology will develop, and so new game equipment will develop. For the second kind, Apple is doing a great job, the game experience is not necessarily to be the best, but this is convenient. 2DS is portable equipment, but people would not willing to take extra equipment if you can easily achieve the function with equipment already carry with.

So the release of 2DS would not have a good market reply since it does not fit the market at all.

David Dong wrote:

YinyijiaGB wrote:I did not organize the passage structure very well, it is written in a hurry, apologize for that first. In game industry, you have to create needs. customers sometimes have no idea what they want.

Take a very simple example, the year when Nintendo announced that they will release Wii, and after have brief introduction for this new device. Most media will have doubts, "what the hell is that device"? But when you actually in that year's E3, in the hall, near the booth, see how the players bring doubts in this expo in the first place and then begin to wave the wii controller and then gradually you see smiles and joys on the face. I truly knew deeper on the definition of the word "creativity"

Nintendo has very weak technology base, compared with the 2 giants, Microsoft, and SONY, if he fellows their steps, the failure will come very soon. He has to be unique to survive, I mean very unique! (In chinese, it called “剑走偏锋”) just like a gambler, making risks, doing something seems stupid in the first place. N64 failed, WiiU failed, but Wii did succeed, and that is truly a huge success. Specifically on this fact itself, it is done not by market research, or by common predict, if that is the case, MS and SONY will do the exactly same thing.

This is the option choose to die hard(huge success) or die slow.

Regarding the price issue. I did not think right in the first place. Just forget that. Sorry!

I agree with your unique.  But I am afraid, unique needs luck, not all the company can survive in unique style.  
Most important, to survive with this "unique", the leader must be "unique", e.g.: Steve Jobs.  
I don't think current Nintendo has such ability and leadership.

Besides, do you think 2DS is unique?  there's nothing unique in 2DS, it's mainly a low-end 3DS, similar to PSP. Please give me a reason to choose 2DS, or please introduce me its core competence.

It is kind of beyond the domain of this case study. But I may know something more in regarding your concern. Please correct me if I am wrong.
 
Like Professor said today, everything has patterns, remember how Nintendo survived the N64 and Gamecube stage. In the latter stage of these 2 devices. Most third party abandoned them. They survived soly by their first party game lineups. Actually this is what Nintendo did in most times. Except for FC era (western is still asleep) and Wii+Nds era (only luck can't explain such huge success). Hardware+software combined is a guarantee of its success. Putting it into detail, the new installation of Pocket Monster(Pokémon) is going to release this October!!!!!!! If my guess is right, THERE MUST BE a bundle version Pokémon of  of 159.99(129.99 for the 2ds and 30 for the game, the price is just a guess) released at the same time. This is the game targeted for kids all over the global. Millions copy is sure thing.
 
Regarding the uniqueness, if I put it in this way, that this is the company owns the IP of Mario and Zelda!!!! It will kind of making the uniqueness of its own. Everyone said the mobile is the trend, and wondering why Nintendo is so blind not seeing this. I believe a company like this will be smart enough to see this long long time ago.
 
My understanding for their not doing this is because their EAGLE!! They are too arrogant, in a positive way it is called persistent, but from my perspective, it has more disadvantages than advantages. If the company is lead by a professional manager, who cares more about the fiscal year report. This won't happen, you guys can play mario on you HTC or iphone long time ago. But unfortunately although it is not lead by the founder's blood relatives (son in law maybe), the current CEO SatoruIwata is still like the founder's son. Eco system will be remained even in the last drop of blood is drained.
 
I respected this company so much, and a lot of the views are quite subjective. Apology and hope you don't mind.
Cheers!

bessiezhao wrote:I don't know the background I am also not user of DS or 3DS, but the case itself tells us that majority of the consumers are casual game players, who are not willing to pay higher cost just for fancy hardware. From the exhibit 2, we can see Nintendo totally sold 149 millions units of DS but just 6.68 million units of 3DS. From the number, it seems "lower generation" DS is more popular than 3DS. However, the label of 3DS to remind kids under age of 6 should not play 3D games on the device may expel many previous consumers.

1. 149 mil is accumulated, only means history but nothing, if there's a data to show the sales volume by year of DS, it should be downward.

2. as a casual game players, pls give a reason that you will choose 2DS instead of smart phone, since smart phone have similar screen and more casual games

3. still, I don't think the case mention the key point of failure of 3DS, that is lack of 3D games. If you check the annual report for the latest data, 3DS had sold out for 86 million. The reason behind should be the increase of 3D games.

YinyijiaGB wrote:

David Dong wrote:

YinyijiaGB wrote:I did not organize the passage structure very well, it is written in a hurry, apologize for that first. In game industry, you have to create needs. customers sometimes have no idea what they want.

Take a very simple example, the year when Nintendo announced that they will release Wii, and after have brief introduction for this new device. Most media will have doubts, "what the hell is that device"? But when you actually in that year's E3, in the hall, near the booth, see how the players bring doubts in this expo in the first place and then begin to wave the wii controller and then gradually you see smiles and joys on the face. I truly knew deeper on the definition of the word "creativity"

Nintendo has very weak technology base, compared with the 2 giants, Microsoft, and SONY, if he fellows their steps, the failure will come very soon. He has to be unique to survive, I mean very unique! (In chinese, it called “剑走偏锋”) just like a gambler, making risks, doing something seems stupid in the first place. N64 failed, WiiU failed, but Wii did succeed, and that is truly a huge success. Specifically on this fact itself, it is done not by market research, or by common predict, if that is the case, MS and SONY will do the exactly same thing.

This is the option choose to die hard(huge success) or die slow.

Regarding the price issue. I did not think right in the first place. Just forget that. Sorry!

I agree with your unique.  But I am afraid, unique needs luck, not all the company can survive in unique style.  
Most important, to survive with this "unique", the leader must be "unique", e.g.: Steve Jobs.  
I don't think current Nintendo has such ability and leadership.

Besides, do you think 2DS is unique?  there's nothing unique in 2DS, it's mainly a low-end 3DS, similar to PSP. Please give me a reason to choose 2DS, or please introduce me its core competence.

It is kind of beyond the domain of this case study. But I may know something more in regarding your concern. Please correct me if I am wrong.
 
Like Professor said today, everything has patterns, remember how Nintendo survived the N64 and Gamecube stage. In the latter stage of these 2 devices. Most third party abandoned them. They survived soly by their first party game lineups. Actually this is what Nintendo did in most times. Except for FC era (western is still asleep) and Wii+Nds era (only luck can't explain such huge success). Hardware+software combined is a guarantee of its success. Putting it into detail, the new installation of Pocket Monster(Pokémon) is going to release this October!!!!!!! If my guess is right, THERE MUST BE a bundle version Pokémon of  of 159.99(129.99 for the 2ds and 30 for the game, the price is just a guess) released at the same time. This is the game targeted for kids all over the global. Millions copy is sure thing.
 
Regarding the uniqueness, if I put it in this way, that this is the company owns the IP of Mario and Zelda!!!! It will kind of making the uniqueness of its own. Everyone said the mobile is the trend, and wondering why Nintendo is so blind not seeing this. I believe a company like this will be smart enough to see this long long time ago.
 
My understanding for their not doing this is because their EAGLE!! They are too arrogant, in a positive way it is called persistent, but from my perspective, it has more disadvantages than advantages. If the company is lead by a professional manager, who cares more about the fiscal year report. This won't happen, you guys can play mario on you HTC or iphone long time ago. But unfortunately although it is not lead by the founder's blood relatives (son in law maybe), the current CEO SatoruIwata is still like the founder's son. Eco system will be remained even in the last drop of blood is drained.
 
I respected this company so much, and a lot of the views are quite subjective. Apology and hope you don't mind.
Cheers!

I totally agree with your "hardware and software should be intergrated", however, the hardware should be the right hardware.
The trend of smart phone take over handheld is inevitable, and similar games had already appear in smart phone, such as pokeman, mario, etc., why will a player choose an old-fashion 2DS just for one game!
Please notice, Nintendo is targeting non-interest players, that means, this consumers does not know the difference between a really pokeman/mario and a copied one.

PS, as professor said, forget about IP, the winner's product will always been copied.