Nintendo prez likes swimming in a clear blue ocean
Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, gives an exclusive interview to The Times where he expounds on his philosophy of swimming in the “Blue Ocean”. It’s a tidy little piece of journalism, and Iwata comes across as a very smart man. In hindsight it all sounds perfectly obvious:
“He is explaining his belief in the ‘Blue Ocean’ theory of business, which says that to succeed you must reach markets (blue oceans) that are free from competitors. Venturing into ‘bloody red oceans’, where packs of rivals fight tooth and nail, can only lead to failure. The central premise – that it is best to zig when others zag – sums Mr Iwata up perfectly.”
But of course, hindsight is always 20/20 vision isn’t it? Which is to say, if four years ago you’d suggested that sidestepping the console arms race and trying to appeal to a different demographic was the way forward, people would’ve laughed out of the room. And yet here we are, with women playing Nintendogs and grandparents playing Brain Training (and vice versa).
The results have been phenomenal, in Britain at least, with latest figures showing that 50% of all console sales in 2007 (so far) have been Nintendo products. No wonder Microsoft want to get a piece of the action.
Mr. Iwata, we salute you. And may we join you for a swim?
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July 15th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
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July 16th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
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July 21st, 2007 at 2:46 pm
[...] First off, Shigeru Miyamoto told Kotaku in a video interview that the GameBoy brand “isn’t really sticking around much longer”. We heard it, but we didn’t believe it. But there was more to come! George Harrison, Nintendo of America’s vice president of marketing and dead Beatle, told GameDaily.biz that they may never use the name again. “This year in our marketing you really won’t see much push against Game Boy itself, so it will kind of seek its own level. It’s hard to say in the future if we will ever bring back the Game Boy trademark. It was a big risk for us to actually pass on it and call the new product the Nintendo DS, but it was part of Mr. Iwata’s philosophy that if we’re going to make a radical difference and try to reach a new audience, then we have to change the name… We had to make a break even though we had one of the greatest trademarks in the history of the industry.” [...]