Nintendo Wii - HBS case
Q1. How attractive is the video game console industry in 2008?
The video game industry can be seen as part of the broader entertainment industry, which is a sector that involves most part of the population all over the world, especially in the developed countries. The more countries will develop, the broader the entertainment industry’s consumer base will become, with the consequence of greatly widening video game industry’s potential customers. More specifically, video game console industry has been growing during its first two decades of life around a segment of young male users. Afterwards, thanks to the debut of PlayStation in 1995, it enlarged its consumer base up and downwards, their age ranging from 6 to 40-45, but still mostly formed by males. Nintendo Wii changed the rules of the game, by addressing people of both sexes, and of ages ranging from 5 to 65. At the same time, it also renewed the way of video gaming, from a mostly individual activity to a group game, and by changing the channel of interaction between the gamer and the console, from a manual joystick towards a body-motion based system. The impressive success Nintendo Wii has experienced during the first two years after its release has to be seen as a massive broadening of the actual consumer base of the industry, which makes it look very much attractive at least for what concerns the following console release, being the figure at stake huge. Therefore, the market for video game consoles has grown tremendously. Moreover, video game consoles have become a means to address more and more consumers’ needs, even outside the entertainment one. As an example, they are now provided with Internet connectivity, so that users can communicate through them, and thanks to Wii’s new modality of playing, they can also help users to stay or get fit.
Still, it is hard to figure out how the “game” in the video game industry is going to evolve in the future, and in what direction are consumers’ preferences
The video game industry can be seen as part of the broader entertainment industry, which is a sector that involves most part of the population all over the world, especially in the developed countries. The more countries will develop, the broader the entertainment industry’s consumer base will become, with the consequence of greatly widening video game industry’s potential customers. More specifically, video game console industry has been growing during its first two decades of life around a segment of young male users. Afterwards, thanks to the debut of PlayStation in 1995, it enlarged its consumer base up and downwards, their age ranging from 6 to 40-45, but still mostly formed by males. Nintendo Wii changed the rules of the game, by addressing people of both sexes, and of ages ranging from 5 to 65. At the same time, it also renewed the way of video gaming, from a mostly individual activity to a group game, and by changing the channel of interaction between the gamer and the console, from a manual joystick towards a body-motion based system. The impressive success Nintendo Wii has experienced during the first two years after its release has to be seen as a massive broadening of the actual consumer base of the industry, which makes it look very much attractive at least for what concerns the following console release, being the figure at stake huge. Therefore, the market for video game consoles has grown tremendously. Moreover, video game consoles have become a means to address more and more consumers’ needs, even outside the entertainment one. As an example, they are now provided with Internet connectivity, so that users can communicate through them, and thanks to Wii’s new modality of playing, they can also help users to stay or get fit.
Still, it is hard to figure out how the “game” in the video game industry is going to evolve in the future, and in what direction are consumers’ preferences