Nintendo’s Wii: Off the beaten path of innovation

Nintendo’s Wii video game console has been outselling both Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PS3. It’s a great example of a company that decided to veer off the innovation path that all the industry players were following. The video game industry has grown tremendously and has produced amazing innovations in game design. But one thing that nobody challenged was the player-game interface. Since I was a kid, the interface has been a combination of joysticks and buttons. There seemed to be no reason to change that. If you’ve ever watched a kid play a video game on any console, you know that they develop the ability to manipulate multiple joysticks and buttons very well, in order to interact with the game (an ability I can’t seem to develop myself anymore). And since the kids and the young adults they later become were always the main market for video game consoles, the companies saw no need to challenge that.

Enter Nintendo. They created a motion sensitive control, now known as the Wiimote, which allows players to interact with the game through natural body movements. As a result, not only is the Wii selling like hotcakes among those same kids and young adults, but it’s also finiding new fans where nobody could have imagined. Yahoo! News reports on how senior citizens are becoming video game fans with the Wii. And I remember a story I read a few weeks ago that touted the Wii as a weight loss tool for overweight kids and adults.

Challenging established industry trends is risky. But it can really pay off. Disruptive innovations (like the Wii) can really shake up entire industries and can create new markets where they didn’t exist before. That is, of course, until they themselves become the new industry trend. Who wants to bet that Microsoft and Sony will both come up with their own version of the Wiimote soon? Maybe there’s will be wearable ones.

Burger King does video games.

Microsites are websites created by companies that allow customers to interact with a brand using games, funny movies, educational interactive tools, and anything else that can hold a user’s attention. Usually, customers can’t buy any products on these sites, though there’s always information on where they can go to buy them. Great examples of microsites are shaveeverywhere.com (for Norelco’s men’s hair trimmer), drinkmilk.ca (by the dairy producers of British Columbia), and subservientchicken.com (by Burger King).

Burger King has gone a step further. They created three video games for the Xbox that feature Burger King characters like the King and the subservient chicken itself. Business 2.0 reports that they promoted them over the holidays and sold over 2 million copies for $3.99 each. They also created BKGamer.com, a microsite where the millions of players of the BK games can go and register high scores, download goodies, get tips and tricks, and of course find out where to buy the games if they don’t have them already.

Marketers have always known that having customers interact with a brand in a fun and enjoyable way is better than just exposing them to the brand with a static ad. The web, with its excellent interactive capabilities presents amazing opportunities to do that. So does video gaming (online or offline).