ABSTRACT
Innovation in market positioning is about exploiting a firm’s existing competencies in different markets or in new ways in existing markets. A good example of market repositioning is Nintendo with its Wii gaming product. In the mid-2000s, Nintendo was suffering from competition by Sony with its PlayStation and Microsoft with its Xbox products. In response, it reconceived its game playing market. The traditional software games market was dominated by young male adults, playing action games with high definition graphics in their bedrooms. Nintendo considered whether they could appeal to a broader market and so avoid the head-to-head competition with Sony and Microsoft. They concluded that there was a large untapped market of women and older people who would be interested in playing games – but a different type of game in a different setting. To support this concept innovation, they added an innovation to the controller using an accelerometer to detect hand movements. This became the new Wii gaming system. Launched in late 2006, the Wii had lower graphics quality than its competitors, but had a new market in women, families and the elderly and moved game playing into the sitting room. The Wii became the fastest selling console ever in the UK and by March 2007, Wii was outselling the Sony PlayStation 2 and 3 and the Microsoft Xbox (see Case Study 3 for more detail).
