The industry that I have chosen to analyse within this essay is Games Consoles; this particular industry was chosen because I have a personal interest and knowledge of the market, which I believe, will help me towards analysing it. The Games consoles industry includes both static and portable consoles, static consoles being devices which are played through a television as opposed to portable devices which can be played on phones and tablets. According to (Mintel 2014) there is currently a 'big three ' who dominate the static games consoles - Xbox, PlayStation and Wii. All three of these games consoles are owned by separate companies. Xbox is developed by Microsoft, PlayStation developed by Sony and Wii developed by Nintendo. Currently within the market there are two consoles for each of Xbox and PlayStation, as 2014 sees the first year that the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 have been on sale since it was released in November 2013. These join the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles which have now been on the market for many years. In the diagram below on the left from (Mintel 2014) by VGChartz we can see it illustrates that the big three currently control 100% of the static console industry with Xbox having a market share of 44%, PlayStation 47% and Wii 9%. Although as we can see above to the left Nintendo is in much difficulty within the static console market with its Wii and Wii U consoles, the company still dominates the portable console market. The market includes two
Nintendo’s strategy for pricing of consoles and games was to lock-in the network effects consoles offered by pricing them at- or below- cost and reaping profits by pricing video games at significant margin. Nintendo took these actions because it knew that if consumers used the NES/ Famicom console, they would be a captive audience for its higher-margin video games which were necessarily more perishable from a consumer taste perspective. This affected the value created by
However, GameStop is still at a disadvantage, because there are such a large number of competitors in the industry. Buyer’s bargaining power are high, since there is no brand loyalty in the industry. Customers are very well aware of the market price of a product and will look for the best deals they can find. Suppliers have high bargaining power since suppliers can choose to integrate forward and sell their products themselves. The success of the retail gaming industry is very dependent on the availability of supplier’s goods. Additionally, since there are low barriers of entrance, substitute products and new entrants often appear in the market. Since most competitors in the industry do not have a strong presence, the expected retaliation towards new entrants is low. An increasing popularity of smartphone games and social media games such as Farmville on Facebook, allows customers to play against friends. Although these social media games do not offer the same experience as a video game, the fact that virtually no switching cost is associated with switching to a competitor’s game and since they are so cheap compared to video game disk and consoles, can easily drive customers from video gaming to online gaming. (Exhibit 2)
• Every company produce video game for different consoles, consoles are developed new generations fast, game developer should compete to gain license for new generation console.
In order for Microsoft to become the leader in the console industry, it is critical to know the kind of consumers that are going to be targeted. According to the Fundamental Marketing article by Isaiah King, the target market for Microsoft Xbox users focuses on three main components: demographic, psychographic, and behavioral (Fundamental Marketing 1). The demographic of Xbox users range from age, generation, and gender. The hardcore gamers age group range from 16 to 30 years old. However, generation plays a huge role in the demographics of the console. Students of 18 years and younger are aimed highly more than older people, as they are leaders of the digital innovation. This variable of the demographic is important, as this age group will be the future industry in new products.
For the industry analysis, we are certain of sales since the PS4 is a consumer product particularly. For that reason, the buyer has a high bargaining power on the product. The market for casual gamers has increased seriously and sales increased after decreasing price of the PS3. Due to the uniqueness of every video game console and the games buyers have bargaining power. A small difference might be significance an extra hundred dollars for an intense gamer. People have more aware to the price difference because they play video games more casually and as a result they have more bargaining power. Buyers have a reasonable amount of power in the video game industry in particular with Nintendo. Although Microsoft and Sony have other sources of revenues, the major source of income comes from the sales of games and game consoles.
To attempt counteract this cyclical slowdown, EB games have introduced an ever-growing variety of accessories with games to increase the revenue raising capacity of their respective consoles, as well as maintaining the loyalty and attention of a fickle gaming public. Some types of games have been released, with specialty controllers to great success, mitigating the expected lull in sales in the lead-up to new consoles. Recently however, the competition has become slightly skewed. Nintendo’s newfound dominance of the market is causing some headaches for Sony and Microsoft.
I aimed to show my readers that the Nintendo Switch isn’t a good console and why it won’t succeed when it releases. The purpose is to steer the reader away from the Switch and make them less likely to buy it. To prove my point I use information from various “gaming” articles, economical statistics, and the opinion of the public (i.e. short interviews).
Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have been competing for a decade with Sony dominating the market throughout most of the years because of their superior technological products. The video games industry faces an entirely new rivalry situation. In 2008, Sony lost its strong position on the market, because of Nintendo’s success with their dynamic Wii over Sony’s high-tech PlayStation 3 and Windows’ Xbox 360. Although the Wii was technologically much less advanced than PS3 and Xbox 360, the Wii's cheaper price, ease of use, innovative motion-sensitive controller, and simple but fun games, made the console a hit all demographics from 9 to 65 years old, male and female. All these factors resulted in Nintendo’s Wii dominating sales and surpassing Sony’s by an impressive ratio of 2:1.
Section 1: A Synopsis and interpretation of the Supply chain changes made between Xbox and Xbox 360 by Anand Kangala
Threat of Substitutes: The main substitute for a video game console would be a personal computer. They can both be used for playing different types of video games and be used for entertainment. The threat of this substitute edging out video game consoles is very low, because they are not completely similar. If anything, video game consoles are edging out personal computers in the gaming industry. The threat of substitutes in the video game is not very high. In 2008, this was not a very strong force in the video game industry.
Overall, the market response to these three consoles has been surprising. Nintendo Wii, has outsold its rivals and more surprisingly, Sony’s PS2 has outsold PS3. This has let Microsoft and Sony with the enormous challenge of competing with a rival possessing two key advantages: a lower cost console and a product with a sound response in the market.
The blue star represents the Wii, the green triangle Xbox, and the red circle PS3. The PS3 combines the highest price with the highest complexity, while the Wii combines the lowest of both. Consumer segments are represented as letters: NG = Non-Gamers, CG = Casual Gamers, HG = Hardcore Gamers. The Hardcore Gamers prefer the PS3 in terms of complexity, but would like a lower price. The Non-Gamers want a low price (they don't want to pay anything) and a simple game. The Casual Gamers want something in between, but are closest to the Wii. You can see that the Wii appeals to two segments, while the PS3 and Xbox fight over just one segment. This leaves an opening in the middle for a competitor who can appeal to the Casual Gamers -- the iPhone, perhaps?
I remembered there was a time when “go home and play Nintendo” was a vernacular amongst kids in America. Since its inception in the 1970s, Nintendo has become the generic name for a game console with its easy control, simple plots, and beloved game characters from Pikachu to Mario to Link. And in the last decade, people who had never played games before jumped out of their sofas and threw their arms around to play baseball and bowling on their Wii consoles, proving Nintendo games didn 't hinder kids from their studies but instead brought families together for a good ole time. What a marvelous thing! But the video game giant has since seemingly lost its luster from the fierce competition from the mobile app sector. With cheap rates and advanced technologies, smartphones and tablets seem to be the rational one-stop choice where people indulge their game fantasies. Nintendo even refused to hop on the mobile app wagon as they thought smartphone apps are cheap and would eventually damage Nintendo’s reputation. The company’s revenue and stock have plummeted tremendously for the past years.
products such as video games (BBC News 2004). As the case study indicates despite the traditional nature of
The main obstacle facing a start-up video game console company from entering the industry is saturation of the market from the larger video game console makers or the “big three” Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony. The big three tend to release new game consoles around the same time frame and compete head to head for sales. During the time frame it is impossible for a new entry to jump into the fray. 2010 was a banner year for video console sales Sony’s PS3 sold 14 million units followed by Microsoft’s Xbox 360 13 million and surprisingly Nintendo’s Wii led the big three selling 17 million units. After the 2010 release of all three consoles sales started to decline for each company. Nintendo took the largest sales loss at 72% in 2013 only 747,000 were sold compared