A while ago I wrote a spirited piece attempting to merge the best of Brian Arthur's Increasing Returns philosophy with some of Chris Anderson's ubiquitous Long Tail theory. To some extent the merger was also meant to sweep under the rug some weaknesses that I found in both approaches. If you are so inclined, you can read all 8000 words of it or simply let me sum it up for you here: in a platform war, the winner is always the one that delivers the killer app first and then does everything possible to give end users tools to develop and extend the value of their platform (the end of the tail). I called this the Increasing Tail strategy. Microsoft is, of course, the poster child for this. And Apple is the hat-trick contender (Mac, Newton, iPOD) for worst place in this game.
A few days after publishing this I got a great comment from Jim Plamondon which I ended up publishing. Turns out he had worked at Microsoft and was validating that they intentionally used (and funded) this strategy. Ahh 60MM funding or 20/20 hindsight - either one.
Well, the boys (and girls) in Redmond are up to it all over again with the XBox. Two announcements in a row should have Sony investors shaking in their boots. Not so much for what Microsoft can do, but what Sony has historically missed the boat on doing.
Announcement #1: Users can download games to the XBox across the net from a central store. New characters, weapons, demos, games, trailers, oh my! In case you blinked, the XBox in now a video game commerce platform!
Announcement #2: Any one and their first-person-shooting-grandmother can write their own games for the XBox and sell them online. The world of gaming box development, traditionally closed off to all but a few vendors, is now open to everyone.
Hold Increasing Tail batman! For anyone that can't see the correlation with their earlier dominance (Windows, Office, etc..) this is the exact same strategy. Build a platform (XBOX/Online Store), launch killer apps (Hello, Halo anyone) and then give away as many developer tools as possible so everyone can add to the end of the tail for you (XNA). If the folks at Sony and Nintendo miss the cluetrain this time, shame on them!
Every one acknowledges that today's life seems to be very expensive, but people require cash for various stuff and not every one gets enough cash. Hence to receive quick loan and commercial loan will be a correct solution.
Posted by: Naomi18Mccarty | July 16, 2011 at 01:03 PM
To paraphrase Clinton, "it's the developers, stupid."
The XBox is just a channel through which games are delivered to the consumer. Microsoft's job is to make the XBox the most profitable channel for game developers -- and the most enjoyable to develop for, too, because it's never ALL about the money. Big surprise, Microsoft is good at its job. (Hi, guys!)
One can generalize this concept easily beyond game platforms. Consider YouTube, for example. Some random guy in Korea -- no one you would have otherwise heard of -- is now regarded as a guitar-playing legend because of his remarkable performance of Pachelbel's Canon in D (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5Sl8sZuT-U). His video has been seen over eight million times on YouTube and Google Video, and now that he's been covered in the New York Times and NPR, his hits are going through the roof. YouTube is just a channel for the delivery of content, by which funtwo has become famous.
But this notion goes deeper. Imagine that you were trying to launch a new electronic musical instrument (e.g., www.thummer.com). A musical instrument, too, is just a platform for artistry. You could spend a fortune advertising your new instrument -- trying to cram it through the traditional retail distribution channel, for example -- but why not leverage the Net, instead?
If you could sell it cheap enough to be an impulse buy, and yet deliver all sorts of new creative opportunities to musicians, then you could "let a thousand funtwo's bloom" -- a commercialization strategy that would not have been possible before the Inernet.
While the demand for such a new instrument would be geographically thin at first, the Internet could aggregate that demand globally, allowing the new instrument to be sold profitably at unit volumes much lower than those required pre-Internet. The result? A potential "niche-buster" -- driven by the videos of self-motivated individuals, shared with the world.
Because it's the music, stupid!
Jim Plamondon
CEO, Thumtronics Ltd
www.thummer.com
Posted by: Jim Plamondon | September 01, 2006 at 01:02 AM
kathy sierra did some great work calling this a "wake" - like a boat pulling through the water - with all the additional activities being the churn in the waves and so on. http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/archives/000534.html
Posted by: james governor | August 30, 2006 at 07:27 AM
The whole world hates MS - However, they all know MS is the best.
Taking PCs to every home as been achieved, the next obvious thing is taking gaming to every home.
Time to invest (again) in MS.
"If the folks at Sony and Nintendo miss the cluetrain this time, shame on them!"
I like that qoute
Posted by: psguyblogger | August 28, 2006 at 02:30 AM