Ok, after the short introduction of the last post, let’s start with the first part of our analysis.
In order to highlight the different strategies of the 3 competitors, it’s necessary to take a look at the market, analysing the key success factors of the whole sector and trying to understand which company got the best from each factor.
Of course:
- we are not going to say which strategy is the best one, at least not now;
- it’s likely that you will find something missing form my list. If so, please feel free to add your comments to this post.
I’ll proceed with an alphabetical order, simply because none of these factor can be considered better than the others: the secret is within the ability to put in place a COHERENT strategy, without the need to be the best in each sector.
BRAND
It’s a tautology, but the brand is important. 10 years ago, before the advent of the Playstation, we can say that Nintendo and SEGA were synonyms of “console videogames”. If you followed the link in my introductive post, you already know why SEGA is not on the scene anymore.
When Sony decided to “attack” the console market, they pushed on marketing, on brand valorisation, on advertising. They made a lot of investments to become popular in this market too. And they were successful.
The same did Microsoft 5 years ago, with their first XBOX.
Nintendo strategy was different and the result was that both the XBOX and the Playstation brand became really popular. Nintendo lost some of their popularity, but thanks to the portable console segment they were able to “survive”.
Now, in 2007, these 3 competitors can count on greats and strong brands, which makes really unlikely the arrival of new comers. Read more
