Rob Fahey 16:38 (BST)
17/02/2006

Comment: Apple's disruptive approach inspires Nintendo

It isn't even competing in the videogames space, but the influence of Apple can be felt strongly across the entire interactive entertainment industry, as comments this week from a senior Nintendo executive reveal, says Rob Fahey.

"Trying to disrupt the market has been a dangerous and risky approach, but it has paid off..."

One company which ends up being mentioned in these editorials more often than might be expected is Apple Computer; a firm which has no direct involvement in the videogames industry, and whose main computing platform, the Macintosh, has little more than token support from videogames publishers.

However, our interest in Apple isn't without good reason. Ever since the iPod and iTunes Music Store set a benchmark both for the success of a consumer electronics brand and for the willingness of consumers to move to a digital distribution mechanism, the Cupertino-based company's every move has been carefully scrutinised by top executives in the interactive entertainment business.

Nowhere is this more evident than in comments made by Nintendo of America's sales and marketing VP, Reggie Fils-Aime, in a column which he recently wrote for Brandweek. Fils-Aime is an effusive and widely-liked spokesperson whose brash style is a breath of fresh air in sharp contrast with Nintendo's often overplayed Japanese reserve, and he didn't skip a beat in admitting that the company's approach with the DS and Revolution products has drawn much from Apple's example with the iPod.

Both approaches, he noted, are aimed at bringing "disruptive" products into the market; devices which interrupt the standard progression of escalating technology by being more low-tech than their competitors, but innovating in terms of usability, pricing and broad appeal. The iPod has often been criticised on the entirely true grounds that it is less powerful, boasts less functionality and supports less music formats than rival products from other companies, but that's not the point of the product.

The point is that it offers an end-to-end experience in hardware and software which is unrivalled by any competitor, which appeals to consumers far outside the gadget geek demographic who were the sole consumers of digital music players before Apple entered the market, and which is supported by a fantastic branding exercise that has made "iPod" into a generic term for all such music players.

For Nintendo, that approach is exactly what it would like to do with the DS and the Revolution. The company has already said that it doesn't want to compete with Microsoft and Sony in technological terms; the DS is vastly underpowered compared to the PSP, and the Revolution will boast a basic specification which will be dwarfed by both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. The company is banking on the idea that mass market consumers won't care; that just like the iPod completely bypassed the question of technical specifications by sporting an intuitive and innovative interface and a brilliantly integrated system for syncing music with your PC, the Revolution will dodge all questions of 3D performance or HDTV support by virtue of its brand new control system and simple, powerful online functionality.

For both companies, the approach of trying to disrupt the market has been a dangerous and risky one, but so far, it has paid off. The success of the iPod speaks for itself, and has given Apple a leg-up back into a playing field where companies like Microsoft and Sony recognise it as a serious threat to their ambitions in the consumer space; the success of the DS has proved that Nintendo is still a formidable force in the videogames market, and has allowed the Kyoto-based company to actually expand the handheld market in the face of a powerful challenge from Sony which many commentators saw as the deathknell for the firm.

All of which explains why Apple is important - not just because it challenges Sony and Microsoft in areas which are directly related to their console media functionality, but because it is a company whose approach is surprisingly similar in many ways to that of Nintendo, and to whom the Japanese firm is not shy about turning for inspiration. In a peculiar way, Apple is almost an honourary player in the console wars - without actually having a console itself, the company deservedly shares mindspace, and poses a serious threat to, those who would use videogame systems as the back door into dominance of the home media market.