Getting It Wrong

Nintendogs and Brain Training were almost pathetically simple compared to the complex concepts which are routinely employed by more traditional games, yet these are the games responsible for a genuine industry revolution. It doesn't matter that they're simple; you can say that "an idiot could have thought of that" until you're blue in the face, but the fact is, no idiot actually did. Nintendo did, and for a while, those simple concepts were enough to make the company into Japan's second most valuable corporation, its market capital outstripping banks, property firms, heavy industry and giant media companies.

They were followed by an avalanche of software, some of which simply aped the success of Nintendo's market leaders (take a bow, every unimaginative and unscrupulous executive who pushed a Brain Training style game out onto the market, hoping to capitalise on unwary consumers picking up rival titles by accident), but some of which helped to expand the DS out into new territories. From fitness assistants to interactive recipe books to language learning aids, the console sprouted a wealth of innovative software which capitalised on the lessons of interactive entertainment to improve a host of "non-gaming" activities.

Bitter core gamers, annoyed at the invasion of their sacred domain by a host of newcomers, occasionally dismiss the DS in the same terms as they do the Wii - it's your mother's console, designed for the "casuals" and with nothing to appeal to real gamers. They miss the point. The DS has something for everyone, successfully filling almost every niche in the market - and it's only by filling an enormous range of niches that a platform can ever truly become mass-market. Yes, the DS has fitness and brain training applications for the older generation, but it also has core games for the traditional market - and so much more besides. It has software for small children, for teenage girls, for language learners, for music fans, for tourists, for aspiring chefs and for everyone else in between.

What have we learned, then, from the unexpected and meteoric success of the Nintendo DS? In broad terms, of course, we've learned that the games market is bigger than any of us imagined, and that the definition of a game (or of a control mechanism) is broader than many of us had allowed for. We have learned that disruptive hardware can turn this industry on its head just as effectively as it has done in other industries. We have learned that you underestimate the ingenuity of Nintendo's engineers and designers at your peril.

As we tuck into our humble pie this week, however, perhaps the most important lesson which industry pundits and execs alike have learned is this - that any forecast or prediction based entirely on factors within the existing boundaries of the industry is bound to be wrong. As the industry expands, it's vitally important to consider outside factors at all times - looking out at other sectors within technology and media, at consumer trends in other markets, at social factors, at the macroeconomic climate and at every other factor imaginable before making a judgement.

The true failure in every prediction of doom for the DS was that they mostly consisted of gamers looking at the device and saying, "I don't like it, and nor do my mates" - without ever wondering what people who weren't raised on a diet of Quake and Tekken might make of it. This week's figures are a final, resounding demonstration of just how out of touch we, and our mates, actually were.