In the last article in the "Xiaomi Entrepreneurial Thinking" series, I shared my understanding of the extreme: the ultimate is to achieve the limit of one's own ability and achieve the height that others cannot do. In practice, "extreme" has two meanings, namely, unlimited mental investment, sparing no effort to strive for the best, and unlimited pursuit of optimal solutions, cognitively reaching the essence of the industry and user needs.
In today's article, I want to share a game company that I really admire and embody the ultimate philosophy - Nintendo. Nintendo has a strong presence in the gaming space, finding the best solution in many gaming areas, creating a number of well-known games with great experiences, such as Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda.
So why does Nintendo make so many obsessive games? How does it find the ultimate optimal solution on the product? What kind of corporate culture underpins its continued success? (The following content is excerpted from the relevant chapter of "Xiaomi Entrepreneurial Thinking" Part II "Xiaomi Methodology")
Why Nintendo is the "master of the world"
The ultimate highest state is to be cognitively ahead of the entire industry, the first to insight, and reach the essence of the industry and user needs. After all, people can't make more products than they know. Only by always leading the way in cognition can we ensure the ability and environment to continuously produce the ultimate products in the long term.
The most typical example comes from the gaming industry.
The essence of the game is "creativity" and "fun". Former Nintendo President Satoshi Iwata's classic keynote speech at the GDC 2005 forum is still fresh in my memory. The most important point he made was "The Heart of the Player". The key to a successful gaming company is that it must create a culture that loves games, and everyone must be a gamer! Such a company can achieve sustainable and long-term success.
• On my business card it says I am the president of a company. In my own opinion, I am a game developer. Deep down, I'm actually a player.
• Have you ever worked hard to develop a game you didn't even want to play?
• Even if we come from different parts of the world, even if we speak different languages, even if we eat different foods or rice balls, even if we have different experiences in games, everyone here today has a very important similarity. This common point is that we all have the same "player heart".
When asked how he sees competition with other companies, he replied: "I never felt that Nintendo was competing with other companies; What Nintendo should do is not compete with other companies, but focus on the feelings of players; Nintendo's enemies are the idea of "not caring about the gamer".
Because of this investment and cognition, Nintendo continues to come up with countless optimal solutions, such as FC game consoles establishing the "cross button" standard on game equipment, such as "Mario Bros." produced in 1983 defining a series of paradigms of platforming games, such as "Super Mario 64" on N64 devices defining the perspective of 3D games and many other operation implementations, such as Wii opening home games for the whole family. In addition, Nintendo's latest console platform, the Switch, innovatively pioneered the fusion of home consoles and handhelds, and its debut escort game "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" won the industry's top TGA (The Game Awards) 2017 Game of the Year, Best Game Design and Best Action-Adventure Game. In this open-world game with amazing freedom, players can freely use various scenes in the game to create a variety of imaginary and extremely realistic gameplay such as igniting updrafts to fly, cutting trees to cross rivers, etc., resulting in an unprecedented sense of immersion of "this is a real world". It's amazing how creative it is.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Nintendo has a century-old history, starting from playing cards, and later also doing toys and game games, and the understanding of "entertainment" is engraved in the soul of this company. Since entering the video game industry with an electronic printing screen handheld such as "Game & Watch" and arcade products such as "Donkey Kong", Nintendo has been in the game industry for 50 years. In terms of volume, its market value is far inferior to Sony and Microsoft; In terms of game console performance, after the GameCube (a game console device produced by Nintendo) at the beginning of the new millennium, whether it is a home console, a handheld, or now a Switch that integrates a home console and a handheld, Nintendo's hardware products are far inferior to its competitors of the same era. For example, in the field of handheld game consoles, Nintendo's NDS series is far inferior to Sony's PSP in terms of performance, picture quality, and multimedia capabilities, but the former's full life cycle sales are nearly twice that of the latter, and the software-hard ratio (that is, the ratio of hardware sales to software sales, the more software sales, the more successful) is far ahead of PSP.
Nintendo Switch
It is precisely because of the deep understanding of "creativity" and "fun" that Nintendo's products have achieved the ultimate in "gameplay", and although Nintendo also encountered crises at the end of the 20th century, they quickly returned to glory and are still standing today. There is a very famous saying in video game player circles: "Nintendo is the master of the world", which is the highest praise for an extreme company.
I learned a lot from Nintendo, especially their gaming culture and their insistence on always focusing on the player experience. Because if there is no love and intention, there is no way to do things to the extreme, to the height that others cannot do. Therefore, at Xiaomi, I have always encouraged students to love what they do, always think from the user's point of view, and strive to make the best product and experience.
The above is my ultimate understanding, in the next sharing, I will share the next keyword of the seven-word tip - word of mouth, stay tuned.
Thank you!