Week 2 EOC: Boston Consulting Group - Video Games

            I am part of a generation that grew up with video games.  I had the very first Nintendo, which my brothers and I enjoyed for hours at a time playing such games as; Mike Tyson’s Punchout, Excite Bike, and Contra just to name a few.  These days gaming is a competitive multi-billion dollar industry that many people thought was down-turn resistant.  Never the less, sales have begun to slide because of a variety of different reasons leaving companies to wonder what to do.  To assist in analyzing these trends one can use the Boston Consulting Group portfolio.  “Under the classic Boston Consulting Group portfolio, the company invests funds from mature, successful products and businesses (cash cows) to support products and businesses in faster-growing markets (stars and question marks), hoping to turn them into cash cows.”  -  http://digitalbookshelf.artinstitutes.edu/books/9780558851903/content/7/chapter?page=10&q=Boston+Consulting+Group

            Using this model the regular Nintendo games of my youth would fit in as “the dog” (low market share, low market growth) because of its low popularity.  The NES or how I call it, Regular Nintendo was first released to North America October 1985 and discontinued in North America in 1995-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System.  Now, you can still play these games on the newer consoles such as Wii, but manufacturing the original consoles has come to an end.  So people have moved onto bigger and better graphics, games, and technically advanced consoles such as Xbox, PlayStation 3, and Wii, this would be "the cash cow" (high market share, low market growth rate).   Moving forward gaming seems to be moving towards a more player interactive style with games systems such as Wii-sports, Xbox Kinect, and the popularity of MTV’S Rock Band; which I would put in as "the star" (high market share, high market growth rate) with 3 of the top 10 games sold being player interactive games; #2 is Just Dance 3 by Wii, #4 is Kinect Adventures Xbox360, and #7 is Zumba Fitness by Wii. –http://www.vgchartz.com/weekly/.  Now "the question mark "(low market share, but high market growth) represents what the next hot trend in video games will be.   For me it will be something that combines the ease of a I-pad with the inexpensiveness of the free game "Angry Birds", and the interactivity of a Wii-sports or Xbox Kinect.  Does this exist yet?  I do not know, but with the increasing popularity of interactive/fitness minded games, a new generation of youth building the climate of tomorrow, maybe such a thing will be developed and profited from.  Good luck to the video game industry!