charlequin said:
Right, well... that's what you're wrong about. You can't fully support two different software platforms at the same time; you can't let long-time hardware owners be able to keep buying software without new hardware if you create new hardware that plays its own unique new software. This isn't a fuzzy issue or something that's debatable; it's one of the most basic rules of the industry.
It has pretty largely been done. The GBA continued for two full years with virtually no decline in the US after the release of the DS despite generally full backwards compatibility on the part of the DS. It's only in 2007 that the GBA has actually finally died.
The PSX also continued a good deal after the PS2 came out as well; racking up literally tens of millions of sales after it was supposedly replaced--again, despite full backwards compatibility.
The only other example of proper BC that's been done is the GBA being GBC/GB compatible. In this case, the original product was pretty much headshotted. The XBox also died very quickly after the 360 was launched despite a lack of full BC, but this is largely because Microsoft terminated the XBox by terminating all hardware production pretty much instantaneously.
The handover can be pretty smooth if you are smart about it. If anything, Nintendo was too conservative with the DS in the US because they did their best to overly protect the old product brand at the expense of the new one.
Anyway, you keep going on about "something different from the rest of the industry" and then being like "Nintendo will revolutionize the industry by having a 5-year product lifecycle! You know, like no one has ever done before!" All the while, what you're citing as your example is something that suggests exactly the approach I'm describing -- keeping your software platform the same while you diversify your hardware offerings -- which is something brand new to the industry. So... how thoroughly have you thought your position through to begin with?
There's no doubt that the industry has had short life cycles before. I'm not saying that the idea of launching early is new. It's not. What I'm saying is that, in direct contradiction with the post you made earlier when you expounded about how only the person in the losing position can gain an advantage from launching a new product and forcing a new generation, I believe that if Nintendo can significantly market and differentiate a new product, they can actually gain by going early--this is the respect in which I feel the situation can most directly be compared to the iPod.
Not necessarily the structural changes of the new product, but moreso the idea that despite the fact that Apple is selling iPods as fast as it can make them and despite the fact that it has virtually no competition of substance, it's still firing off generation after generation of new product to keep its brand popular, keep its products new and inventive, encourage double dipping, etc.
To summarize everything I've said over the last ten posts: When you're an unthreatened number one, you need to keep ahead of the curve rather than resting on your laurels or responding directly to supposed competitors. Nintendo's behavior during the Game Boy era is not something that will happen again, because they know that whether or not they're number 1, they can be a stronger number 1 by continuing to move forward.
I think Nintendo will do this by launching a DS2 before people expect them to, probably in late 2009. You seem to think Nintendo will do this by doing incremental upgrades to the DS leading eventually to a DS2 in 2010. Given the overall lack of disagreement between our positions here, I'm not sure why you're so sure that I'm completely off base. We're literally talking about a one year disagreement in timelines.
I don't think there's anything outrageously wrong with the idea that they'll do more incremental upgrades, but I do think that there are some unique advantages to the way I'm talking about and I think the best way they can harness those advantages is to go early.
