Nintendo Takes it in the Teeth

In track it often pays to be in second place. You let the leader set the pace and cut the wind for you. You conserve energy, push at the end, grab the gold and perhaps do a little jig.

I imagine Nintendo spends quite a bit of time staring at their collection of bronze medals. They wonder if they should cut back the research and development budget just a little bit. If you follow video games, you can probably already guess what I'm getting at. The PS3's controller's eery mimicry of the Wii controller.

While Sony and Microsoft slug it out with flashy graphics and saturation marketing campaigns, Nintendo tries now things and pushes the gaming envelope. They were the first to take a flagship 2D title into the 3D world. Mario was 35 in the Virtual Boy long before anyone was even contemplating 3D -granted the Virtual Boy was a trainwreck in terms of profits. They took a chance on a two screen handheld with a touchpad interface and the DS matches or beats the PSP in most markets. Now the Nintendo Wii is based around a motion sensitive controller that is completely foreign to current gamers. Nintendo is the only company that I see actively pushing new ideas and experiences into the video game sphere. Yet it hasn't been a dominate force in years.

Capitalism is terrible at rewarding innovators. The guys who bring new products to market deal with bugs and initial consumer wariness only to be cut down from behind by the second wave; people who fix the initial product's failings and have Marketing budgets instead of R&D budgets. They reap huge profits by standing on the shoulders of people with real balls and imagination.