Apple’s announcement can be said to have underwhelmed the talking heads. Coming on the heels of Amazon’s Kindle it felt a little like they were standing still.

It was inevitable.

When a company releases a breakthrough product, everything after it is a case of enhancement. Innovation is the gunshot which makes us take notice.

And yet we still want to focus on that gunshot when in fact we should be focussing on the effect it has had.

Look at it another way and we see that there are two sides to product development: the solution and the marketing.

The solution is where the innovation occurs. You take a ‘problem’ and find a solution. It’s what led to the iPod, the iPhone, to Google, to Twitter, the Dyson and to all the other technologies that have become ubiquitous in our lives.

Marketing is how it reaches the public. Key messages inform as to what that technology, what that solution, can do for us. Will it let me talk to my family in Australia? Does it enable me to write tragic poetry whilst standing on cliff-tops? Can I use it to find my way to that secret club where we dress up? These are the benefits which innovation can bestow upon me, the humble user.

There comes a point, however, when the majority of people are just quite content with how their benefits are delivered. Whilst some might care about how pin sharp their photos are, more will be happy just to flick through the blurry images they fired off on holiday. Others might want 1080p in order to fully appreciate the bright colours of the shaky handcam film they downloaded. More will be content with the fact that all it took was two simple actions to start watching the latest Tim Allen christmas movie.

In other words, there comes a time when the physical phone no longer matters. How fast a piece of technology is is only relevant when it hinders the benefits it promised to deliver.

Amazon know this. Their innovation is in the ecosystem; in the delivery of benefits. So too is Apple’s. They just didn’t focus on that. If they made any mistakes with their announcement of the 4s, it was in allowing their usual secrecy to complicate their very simple message in a way that never happens with their routine upgrading of the desktop and laptop hardware.

Innovation happens once in a product’s lifetime. After that it’s a question of showing people what it can do for them.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Originally named Project Natal, Kinect is an upcoming motion control peripheral that requires no controller. It tracks your body movements allowing you to interact with games directly and was touted as being able to do a lot more than the Wii. Basically, Microsoft is jumping on the motion control train (and Sony seems to be following suit with Move) in order to grab a slice of the Nintendo pie. It makes sense, of course. Nintendo have shown that there is a lot of money to be made in the casual gaming market and any business would have to be very myopic to turn a blind eye to that.  Microsoft want in. They want some of those brand new casual gamers playing on their console and in order to do that they’ve come up with Kinect. I don’t think it’s going to work out.

It should be remembered that when Nintendo started marketing the Wii they moved into a blue ocean of opportunity where there was no competition. Whilst Microsoft and Sony were focusing on the more hardcore gaming crowd with the 360 and the PS3, Nintendo struck out to attract a brand new audience who had perhaps never been interested in gaming before. It resulted in the Wii selling millions. It also resulted in a lot of gamers who prefer a larger amount of depth and complexity in their games buying a 360 or PS3 instead of a Wii. If Microsoft want to sell to the more causal crowd they will be mostly be competing with Nintendo for customers rather than attracting brand new ones. They will have to convince them that Kinect is worth spending money on; which could end up being pretty expensive if the customer doesn’t already own a 360. They will probably have to convince them that they need Kinect even though it is probable they already own a Wii. Most importantly of all, they are going to have to convince them that the Kinect can provide a different sort of entertainment than the Wii.

Ingenuity. That’s what helped bring so much of the Wii’s success. Unfortunately, it seems to be lacking on Kinect. For every popular Nintendo title then Kinect has an answer. If you enjoy playing Mario Kart, why not have a go on Joyride? If you like using Wii Fit for exercise then give Your Shape a try! And it goes on – the answer to Just Dance is Dance Central, to Wii Sports is Kinect Sports, to Wii Sports Resort is Kinect Adventures. They’ve even got a giant tiger/kitten pet simulator called Kinectimals which is very, very reminiscent of Nintendogs. Nintendogs was released in 2005. Have there really been no original ideas since then? Do Microsoft believe that the controller free technology on Kinect is enough to push these games onto customers who are likely to already own similar games? Maybe they do and maybe they are right. Maybe they plan to make games in the future that really push the limits of motion control with new and interesting ideas. At the moment, I wouldn’t bet any money on it.

There is only one sure-fire way to create new gaming audiences and to put consoles in the hands of people who may not have wanted one previously – innovation. An audience normally doesn’t know what it wants until you invent it and tell them so – something Nintendo did very well with the Wii. To be fair, innovation is hard to do and it is easier to try and jump on a bandwagon for an audience that has already been proven to exist. Kinect is playing it safe by chasing Ninentdo’s casual gamer but it is unlikely to reap the grand rewards that Microsoft is hoping for.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

So where does that leave the Wii? An underpowered anomaly or a still relevant gaming machine? Pricing no longer gives the Wii an edge to mainstream families who like a little light gaming with their evening telly and Natal means that the Wii experience is no longer exclusive. Unless Nintendo begin to innovate again then it’s not hard to predict Microsoft moving past them. Way past them.

Nintendo have led the way in opening up games to the mainstream. They offended some gamers in doing so but delighted far more (me included). The experience of seeing a grandparent waving around in front of the motion sensor is rewarding. But it’s true that every other publisher has followed this success in diminishing returns. Replicating rather than innovating. And nowhere is this more evident than in the advertising. As one commentator points out:

“I hate those Wii adverts for bowling and fighting simulations that try and make it look like the typical family having a great time.”

The Nintendo approach of family friendly actors interacting with the Wii was fresh and helped convey the core values Nintendo were aiming for. But as we’ve seen all too often, setting a style that succeeds just seems to prevent others from innovating for themselves. There is, after all, more than one way to skin a family friendly ad.

If Nintendo aren’t careful we’ll all be needing that pulse monitor they are developing in order to check whether they are still around.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.