Week 2:Boston Consulting Group

Obviously you have the big three when it comes to video gaming consoles, Playstation, XBOX, and Nintendo with its WII.  When it comes to analyzing them on the BGC scale, I would say they may fall into different places on the chart.  Now Nintendo is a weird story because it has the DS as well as the Wii which according to figures is the bestselling platform right now.  The younger audience definitely is the target market here, you see tons of kids with DS and as kids get older more of them are getting them so it would definitely fall into the Star category on the BGC chart.  “Nintendo in June sold more than 155,000 of the 3DS console, more than 150,000 of its older Nintendo DS portable and almost 95,000 Wiis, the company said in an e-mailed statement today, citing data from researcher NPD Group.” (http://newyork.newsday.com/news/nation/nintendo-ds-handheld-sales-surpass-5-million-1.3839546) I may have to make Microsoft the question mark on this especially after introducing the new campaign on the kinnect featuring the Nike Fit program.  “Microsoft Corp said on Monday sales of its revolutionary Kinect sensing device for the Xbox game console have hit more than 18 million just over a year since launch.  Popularity of the device has helped Microsoft Xbox recently outsell Nintendo's Wii and Sony's PlayStation in the United States game console market.” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/09/microsoft-kinect-ces-keynote_n_1195735.html)  Sony is sitting in the Cash Cow area, I don’t feel like they are making any innovations but they aren’t losing any customers either.  I would say they appeal more to the older gamer, people around my age because they have more mature level games with more adult material in them.  They haven’t come out with anything terribly new and revolutionary to compete with the Kinect so they may lose some potential customers because of that.  “That might come as a surprise to those who have been following research firm NPD's monthly game industry sales announcements. Earlier this month, NPD revealed that for October -- and for the 22nd month in a row -- Microsoft's Xbox 360 sales outpaced all other consoles. Microsoft announced that it sold 270,000 units in October and held 56 percent of the current-generation console sales during the month.” (http://news.cnet.com/8301-10797_3-57551097-235/watch-out-xbox-360-here-comes-the-playstation-3/)