> So companies like Microsoft, Motorola, HP, Acer, Nokia, Sony, and Nintendo can only do what they've always done.
I'm not sure Nintendo fits well in this list. They have seemed pretty willing to "take risks" (in a controlled way) and do things differently in recent years (since 2002~2003 and the start of the DS project, though they weren't initially as bold with it as they could have been, calling it a "third pillar" alongside the GBA and the GC, which we now know was utter bullshit)
Nintendo also have "only" just over 4000 employees, which makes them 1-2 orders of magnitude smaller than the other companies listed, except Acer. I'm not sure Acer has ever been known for innovation, though, whereas the others kind of "lost it".
In any case, at that size it's probably a lot easier to make drastic changes than when you have 100000 employees. I'd be interested what the lowest number of employees was that Apple has had since Jobs's return, and how big NeXT was compared to Apple at the time of or shortly after acquisition (in terms of headcount).
> I'd be interested what the lowest number of employees was that Apple has had since Jobs's return
It probably grew steadily through his tenure, especially with the retail extension as that requires a number of employees (Apple staff grew from ~22000 to ~32000 in 2008, as they opened 50 stores, and their temps staff grew from 2100 to 3100)
> and how big NeXT was compared to Apple at the time of or shortly after acquisition (in terms of headcount).
According to wikipedia, NeXT had 520 employees in 1992, before they switched to a mostly software-based model.
The GameCube was clobbered by the PS2. How did Nintendo respond? Not by trying to be more like Sony but by being more like Nintendo. The point is that it's very difficult change corporate culture, for better or worse.
> How did Nintendo respond? Not by trying to be more like Sony but by being more like Nintendo.
Erm… how? Since the NES and the GB, Nintendo had been following a pretty "normal" path of giving more power each time. You could argue that they always had something of an interesting approach to controllers (see N64 and GC controllers), but they'd never entirely opted out of the current/existing performance races and picked "wacko" control schemes before the DS.
Neither the DS nor the Wii is really an exception to the "more power" rule, though the difference between a GC and a Wii is obviously minimal.
The N64 controller was a much "wackier" step than you imply too, in my opinion. Nobody else had the idea of sticking an analogue stick on the controller for a 3D-oriented console. Nintendo did it, and now everybody else has copied.
The Virtual Boy is another contradictory example, though a failed one.
They were definitely doing wacky-ish things before the DS, but not necessarily controller-related. "Hey You, Pikachu!", those Pokemon Snap Blockbuster printing stations, and the e-Reader come to mind.
Just to make it clear : Nintendo really got back to its roots, the Gunpei Yokoi philosophy, after the departure of its old CEO. Before Gunpei Yokoi, Nintendo was making playing cards; he conceived the first nintendo toys (Ultra hand, Ultra machine...) in the 60s, the first Nintendo electronic toys (Love tester, Light gunner ... ) in the 70s, the first Nintendo arcade systems, the Game & Watch concept in the 80s, the Game Boy, the Virtual Boy...
Gunpei Yokoi repeatedly revolutionized markets by recycling well-known technology. For instance the GameBoy went out after the Game Gear. It was obviously inferior technically : black and white, no backlight. However it crushed the competition by providing what was previously oversight : excellent battery life.
> For instance the GameBoy went out after the Game Gear.
Yes, right, the GB (released in April 1989) went after the Game Gear (released in October 1990). The Game Gear project had barely even started (if that) when the GB was released.
You also overlooked the GB being about half the price of the Game Gear and it being nigh-indestructible (where the Game Gear was plagued by hardware problems, especially early on) and thus a much better fit for handheld, especially children handheld.
You're absolutely right, but the original point is (I think) that Nintendo do things differently to their competitors, which I think you illustrate rather well.
The analogy of the original GB hardware with Apple products (say the original iPod) is a pretty good one: Nintendo delivered what customers actually wanted (portability, near-indesctructibility, great battery life, low cost) at the expense of certain extra features, which it turned out were less important to the customers that Nintendo sought. The iPod was exactly the same: it was worse in many respects than the competition, but sold amazingly well because of all those "other" factors.
Nintendo are also similar to Apple in that they're willing to try something completely out of the box once in a while. People deride both the Wii and the DS (and recently the 3DS) because the hardware specs don't match the competition, but what differentiates both of those products is the originality (and in the case of the 360, the hardware quality!), which is comparable to the way that the iPhone has trounced all comers by re-inventing how people use a phone.
First-party software is an incredibly important part of Nintendo's successes too, and again they differentiate themselves from the competition with a focus on quality, which is obviously not unlike Apple either. That's not to say that Nintendo aren't guilty of churning out some bad games, but they're never buggy, at any rate...
Nintendo's industrial design isn't a patch on Apple's though, and that's definitely part of what the article's about. Things like the DS Lite and Wii are both better than the awful N64 and GameCube designs, but they're rather derivative of Apple products.
Of couse both Apple and Nintendo have made some awful decisions over the last 2 or 3 decades, but there's always been enough of a difference in each company's culture for them to be able to standard apart from the others around them.
OK sorry, actually the Game Gear came after. The Lynx came out about the same time though. Anyway, everybody at the time thought that the game boy will fail because it was so dull.
I'm not sure Nintendo fits well in this list. They have seemed pretty willing to "take risks" (in a controlled way) and do things differently in recent years (since 2002~2003 and the start of the DS project, though they weren't initially as bold with it as they could have been, calling it a "third pillar" alongside the GBA and the GC, which we now know was utter bullshit)