Nintendo Magic: Winning the Videogame Wars

Back in the 80s, Nintendo ruled the home-entertainment market with the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). But then rival Sony introduced PlayStation, which featured advancements and cutting-edge technology that put Nintendo's Super-NES to shame. Nintendo quickly lost its dominant market share to Sony and found itself floundering. In 2006, Nintendo released Wii at the same time Sony introduced its highly-anticipated and much-vaunted PlayStation III and Microsoft's XBox 360. Wii's David defeated PlayStation's Goliath, inversely echoing the SNES/PlayStation outcome of a decade previous. Nintendo Magic: Winning the Videogame Wars is the story of what went right, discussing the business strategies and marketing savvy that took on the mighty Sony and won.

Topics include:
• How where you put your company is just as important as how you run it: being in Kyoto
• From work force to policies, why Nintendo's "just enough" attitude succeeds
• Why the ability to read a balance sheet is overrated
• Respect seniority but approve huge R&D budgets for talented junior employees
• Allowing maximum communication between disparate divisions (hardware and software)
• Enlarging the pie: going after casual gamers (The art of mainstreaming)
• How the Wii will be the next major household appliance and the DSi will be the cell phone of the future.

Nintendo Magic: Winning the Videogame Wars should serve as a warning to similar powerhouse industries never to understimate the modest competitor. It should occupy the bookshelf of any business person smart enough to know they don't need to be a giant to win.