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Nintendo And Blue Ocean Strategy

Nintendo Wii and the Blue Ocean strategy
Marketing Strategy

Reda El Ourouba 06/06/09

Reda El Ourouba

Marketing Strategy

Nintendo presentation:

Nintendo (OTC:NTDOY) started 118 years ago as a Japanese company selling playing cards. In recent months, the company whose name literally translates to "the company that leaves to heaven" has seen its fortunes rocket skywards. In late June 2007, Nintendo's stock price valued the company at $53 billion (USD), just surpassing the market capitalization of Sony, the iconic Japanese electronics company. The comparison is apt considering that Nintendo's next generation Wii game console outsold Sony's new PlayStation 3 about 4 to 1 worldwide. In April 2008 alone, Nintendo sold three-quarters of a million Wii consoles. Furthermore, the company produces many of the games for the Wii, including its recent release of Wii Fit, a fitness game for the Wii console. Nintendo's profitability and sales are influenced by several factors. Video game consumer preferences were extremely important in determining the success of Nintendo's Wii console. The Wii is a shift from conventional console strategy. The Wii is a pure blue ocean strategy product. The following will show us why and how they could reach this success.

Industry Analysis From its modest beginnings in university labs in the 1950s and 1960s, video games have grown into a multibillion industry. Video games are divided into PC games and console games. The former are played on regular home computers, while the latter needs specialized hardware such as Playstation (Sony), Xbox (Microsoft) or Wii (Nintendo) in addition to a TV or display screen. Video game industry global sales reached 21 billion dollars in 2003 and are estimated to surpass the global recorded music industry by 2009 [1]. In the US video game revenues have already exceeded those of the movie box office and have continued to grow strongly to reach around 13.5 billion dollars in 2006 [2].

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