Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, has said that his company is not competing with iPods or mobile phones with the DSi.
In the latest instalment of 'Iwata Asks', the president states, "Nintendo doesn’t have any intention of directly competing with existing products, but the mass media has a tendency to portray everything as a rivalry between opposing companies. It seems some people have the impression that we want to compete with cell phones or the iPod, that putting cameras or music players in our devices is out of character for us."
While Iwata doesn't want us to think Nintendo is competing with such portable devices, however, he can't resist a comparison to the non-competition. "...When I see the final product (the DSi), I feel like it possesses a value as a music player that previous music players haven’t", he says.
Furthermore, it seems like Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto missed the memo about non-competition, indicating that the DSi needs to steal idle time from phones. "I’ve always said that for a while text messaging on a cell phone was beating video games as the easiest way to pass time. During that period, it was more fun for young people to kill time on the train by texting rather than by playing video games", he utters.
"That’s what I used to say, but now we’ve got Nintendo DSi. I want everyone to walk around with their Nintendo DSi on them. It would be great, I thought, if everyone killed time on the train—or wherever—editing the photos they’ve taken on their Nintendo DSi, casually combining pictures, adding text, and sending them to friends."
Damn right! Frankly, if it can entertain you at the bus stop then it's in competition with the DSi - even if it's one of them old fashioned things made out of dead trees with markings made using ink that we've heard talk of.
Anyway, you can see Iwata Asks in full here.
In the latest instalment of 'Iwata Asks', the president states, "Nintendo doesn’t have any intention of directly competing with existing products, but the mass media has a tendency to portray everything as a rivalry between opposing companies. It seems some people have the impression that we want to compete with cell phones or the iPod, that putting cameras or music players in our devices is out of character for us."
While Iwata doesn't want us to think Nintendo is competing with such portable devices, however, he can't resist a comparison to the non-competition. "...When I see the final product (the DSi), I feel like it possesses a value as a music player that previous music players haven’t", he says.
Furthermore, it seems like Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto missed the memo about non-competition, indicating that the DSi needs to steal idle time from phones. "I’ve always said that for a while text messaging on a cell phone was beating video games as the easiest way to pass time. During that period, it was more fun for young people to kill time on the train by texting rather than by playing video games", he utters.
"That’s what I used to say, but now we’ve got Nintendo DSi. I want everyone to walk around with their Nintendo DSi on them. It would be great, I thought, if everyone killed time on the train—or wherever—editing the photos they’ve taken on their Nintendo DSi, casually combining pictures, adding text, and sending them to friends."
Damn right! Frankly, if it can entertain you at the bus stop then it's in competition with the DSi - even if it's one of them old fashioned things made out of dead trees with markings made using ink that we've heard talk of.
Anyway, you can see Iwata Asks in full here.
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Comments
OptimusP 2 Mar 2009 12:06
1/1
Well, it is competing in terms of fullfilling a job for people aka entertaining them during short dull moments, but it isn't competing in terms of how it achieves this. DSi is still a gaming platofrm, iPods are still music-players ,cell-phones are communication devices and books are ... only for Tim.
The idea is to expand the consumer-base to have a DSi in everyone's pocket to do all that entertainment stuff (trough a game-esque way) while they still have a cellphone in their other pocket for communicating with other people (which is wat Shigsy actually said). This aptly called a Blue Ocean Strategy where you go look for new customers instead of battling for the existing ones.
It just happens that all those devices (iPods, DSi's and cellphones) are doing a Blue Ocean expansion, but also are not competing with each other directly in their core-function.
The idea is to expand the consumer-base to have a DSi in everyone's pocket to do all that entertainment stuff (trough a game-esque way) while they still have a cellphone in their other pocket for communicating with other people (which is wat Shigsy actually said). This aptly called a Blue Ocean Strategy where you go look for new customers instead of battling for the existing ones.
It just happens that all those devices (iPods, DSi's and cellphones) are doing a Blue Ocean expansion, but also are not competing with each other directly in their core-function.