Kobun Heat said:
That's true to an extent, although of course Nintendo would still have to sell a healthy absolute amount of software and hardware to their new audience, regardless of whether or not they are the only ones selling to them. To stay in the Blue Ocean metaphor: when the new ocean you've moved to is devoid of fish, it doesn't matter that you're the only fishing boat there.
Of course, the new gamer ocean is obviously filled with plenty of fish, enough for Nintendo to actually outsell the competition in exploiting it, as you say. And I do believe that, while this incredible increase in sales and marketshare wasn't necessary for Nintendo to survive, they were at the very least hoping that this new market was so bountiful that they'd see respectable growth. So they didn't set out to annex their own ocean just to call it their own, they annexed it because it seemed highly lucrative (and yes, it seemed that way largely because no-one else was there, but that's more of a cause than a reason in itself -- semantic though that distinction may be).
