Lost garden has a great article on Nintendo’s innovation strategy and a couple of points jumped out at me, in particular those about market consolidation and the ossification of game play:

• Players become addicted to a specific set of game mechanics.
• This group of players has a strong homogeneous preference for this genre of games, creating a well defined, easily serviceable market segment.
• Game developers who release games within a genre with a standardized set of play mechanics are most likely to capture the largest percentage of the pre-existing market.
• Over time, the game mechanics defining the genre becomes rigidly defined, the tastes of the genre addicts become highly sophisticated and innovation within the genre is generally punished by the market place.

Call me a heretic but I get the feeling that in their first generation Microsoft has managed to ossify their offerings to pretty much just first person shooters and looking at the line up for the 360 that will continue. Don’t get me wrong, there are some real solid titles for both their consoles but the dearth of game play options saddens me and I find it hard to get excited for the arrival of the 360. And no, enhanced Live features do not get me all a twitter, unless of course they deploy sophisticated asshat filters.

Nintendo, however, has taken a risky course with its newest home console offering, much to the chagrin of the hardcore players. The more I think about the potential of the new controller the more excited I become. Like the DS there is incredible potential and the hope is that developers and publishers utilize it and the market is receptive to it. The problem is that the last item of the above list: innovation is punished. So publishers might as well bring out another Halo, Gran Turismo, or GTA at the expense of the truly charming and innovative games like Beyond Good and Evil. Sad really.