Global Recession - Did Nintendo see it coming?

So now we are in this financial crisis, the majority of people are going for cheap things. The situtaion is getting worst by the week, in a few months many will be obligated to forget about luxury and focus on the needs. there is talk now that this will continue for a long time!!! YIKES!!

I ask myself, did ninty see this coming.

MY reasons

1) The wii did not go HD. alotta people today cannot afford HD tv's I(me included). and im not talking USA only, but the rest of the world. HD is luxury.

2) HD machine is more expensive to make. Ninty made the wii non hd, making it a cheaper alternative (dont talk to me bout xbox arcade - rubbish!!)

3) They stuck with dvd and not blue ray. Today blue ray is a luxury.PERIOD!!

So yeah imho its like they new it was coming and are now reaping the rewards.

thoughts.

I don't think Nintendo foresaw the world economic decline, but they did foresee the financial problem in the videogame sector with creating a high-end console that requires a huge budget for every game made for it.

Before the Wii was released, Genyo Takeda, the general manager of R&D, had this to say about the Wii's hardware:

This may sound paradoxical, but if we had followed the existing [hardware improvement] Roadmaps we would have aimed to make it "faster and flashier." In other words, we would have tried to improve the speed at which it displays stunning graphics. But we could not help but ask ourselves, "How big an impact would that direction really have on our customers?" During development, we came to realise the sheer inefficiency of this path when we compared the hardships and costs of development against any new experiences that might be had by our customers.Takeda

Interestingly, Takeda also gave an apt observation of excessive consumerism in general:

It must have been about a year after we started developing Wii. After speaking with Nintendo's development partners, I became keenly aware of the fact that there is no end to the desire of those who just want more. Give them one, they ask for two. Give them two, and next time they will ask for five instead of three. Then they want ten, thirty, a hundred, their desire growing exponentially. Giving in to this will lead us nowhere in the end. I started to feel unsure about following that path about a year into development.Takeda

You can find the whole interview here.

I don't think anyone really saw a collapse of the scale we're experiencing in the future.

But, I think Nintendo put themselves in a position where they could cope with it the most effectively. While not exactly recession proof, they are certainly feeling the effects of a declining economy the least. While other companies in many different markets (not just gaming) are reducing production and shutting down entire departments, Nintendo is expanding and creating new jobs.

It's not the ability to see the future, just an extremely well designed business strategy that made them ready to deal with any eventuality.