《财富》杂志６月号封面。

实在看不动了。那位达人翻下吧。摘要也行。
原文链接

Wii will rock you
Fortune'sJeffrey M. O'Brien explains how Nintendo's new game machine won overthe world - and beat the pants off Sony and Microsoft.

By Jeffrey M. O'Brien, Fortune senior editor   
May 31 2007: 4:50 PM EDT

(FortuneMagazine) -- Nintendo's legendary videogame designer Shigeru Miyamotois lying face down on the floor in Kyoto, Japan, hobbled by a rightcross and struggling to regain his composure. The man some credit withthe very existence of the $30 billion videogame industry, the WaltDisney of our generation, has taken one blow to the face too many. I'mstanding over the creative force behind Donkey Kong, Super Mario,Nintendogs and his latest worldwide sensation, the Wii. I goad him toget up for the rest of his beating.

Clearly, one of us istaking our boxing match a bit too seriously. After all, it's not reallyMiyamoto who has crumbled but rather his avatar - his Mii, in Nintendoparlance. "Ohhh" is about all the man can muster as the clock runs out.Miyamoto puts down his controller and concedes defeat to finish a photoshoot.

may have beaten him at his own game, but we both know who's the realwinner here. Nintendo's newest contraption has performed exactly asdesigned, creating yet another Wiivangelist, this time a gloatinggaijin 5,000 miles from home who not only got up off the couch to playa videogame but actually worked up a sweat. With this little victoryMiyamoto and company gather more momentum in their quest to conquerworthier competition.

Videogame controllers generally feature abewildering array of buttons, and watching an avid gamer work thedevice, thumbs pattering across plastic, can be intimidating. Bycontrast the Wii's wireless, motion-sensitive remote, which Miyamotohad been dreaming of for years, often requires no button manipulationwhatsoever.

In the boxing game my 54-year-old host and I werebobbing and weaving and punching at air - jabs and crosses mostly.Miyamoto, whose official title is senior managing director, would anglehis hands from one side to another to avoid haymakers; each time Imissed, he'd giggle. And everyone in the room laughed along.

Whilegame consoles typically attract youngish males with an antisocialstreak, the Wii is bringing people of all demographics together: innursing homes, for Wii bowling leagues, on cruise ships, at coed (!)Wii-themed parties and, of course, in lines - as hordes of consumersclamor to buy the impossible-to-find $250 machine. Nintendo is churningout over a million units a month and still can't meet demand.

How the Wii is creaming the competition

At the Nintendo World storein New York City's Rockefeller Center, shipments arrive nightly. In thewee hours customers begin lining up around the block. Doors open atnine, and a few hours later the consoles are gone. In the world'sgadget epicenter, Tokyo's Akihabara district, shopkeepers complainabout the lack of inventory. Wii displays are covered with SOLD OUTsigns, while piles of PlayStation3 boxes carry a different message: 5percent OFF. Even the Nintendo of America company store near Seattlesees lines of employees, visitors and contractors. Forget about luckinginto a Wii at your local Best Buy (Charts, Fortune 500).

It'snot unusual for a new game console to sell out during its pre-Christmasintroduction, only to see sales dwindle come January. But six monthsafter the Wii's launch, sales are accelerating. Nintendo sold 360,000boxes in the U.S. in April, 100,000 more than in March. That's two Wiisfor every Xbox 360 and four for every PlayStation3.

While Sony (Charts) and Microsoft (Charts, Fortune 500)lose money on hardware in hopes of seeding the market with theirconsoles, analysts say Nintendo makes about $50 on every unit. It maynot sound like much, but the company plans to sell 35 million of thesethings over the next few years. That's $1.75 billion in potentialprofit. Add that to the ridiculous earnings from the company's handheldgaming device, the Nintendo DS, as well as software sales and licensingrevenue, and you begin to understand why Nintendo's market cap justpassed $45 billion, an all-time high. (Nintendo (Charts) trades on the Tokyo and Kyoto stock exchanges and as an ADR in the U.S.)

Moredifficult to comprehend is how a company founded 118 years ago as amaker of playing cards in Kyoto came to be pummeling Microsoft andSony. The answer has something to do with reinvention. Fromindustry-changing arcade machines to handhelds, 3-D graphics toimmersive game play, Nintendo has shown a knack for leapfrogging itsindustry. Sure, some initiatives failed - a toy vacuum cleaner, a taxiservice, a chain of "love hotels" - but the company rarely fails tosurprise. And if the Wii shortage demonstrates anything, it's that thistime, in changing perceptions of gaming, Nintendo has surprised evenitself.

In a quieter moment Miyamoto ponders that ability tochart a new course. "How Nintendo has been able to create one surpriseafter another is a big question even for me," he says. "I'd like toknow the answer."

New recruits

Theword "Nintendo" is an amalgamation of three symbols: nin, meaning"leave to"; ten, for "heaven"; and do, "company." The most commontranslation in Kyoto is "the company that leaves to heaven." What thatmeans is open to debate. It could be a resignation to fate, as in "Thecompany's destiny is in heaven's hands." But it's clear from a seriesof exclusive interviews with several executives over three months inJapan and the U.S. that little is left to chance. Another translationmight be "Take care of every detail, and heaven will take care of therest."

The man who oversees every detail is president and CEOSatoru Iwata. Iwata, 47, started as a developer for a firm Nintendobought in 2000. Since taking over in 2002 he has westernized Nintendo,instituting performance-based raises and a retirement age of 65.

Tohear suppliers and contractors talk, working with Nintendo is bothfrustrating and inspirational. It can be Wal-Mart-esque, driving downprices by playing parts manufacturers against one another whilechallenging them to be more creative. Employees talk breathlessly aboutloving their jobs while grumbling about hectic schedules. Everyoneflies commercial. The one person permitted in first class, Iwatahimself, has been known to slog to London and back in one day for apress conference. No hotel required.

In short, Iwata has madeNintendo as efficient as a bullet train and as stingy as a bento box.The company's 3,400 employees generated $8.26 billion in revenue lastyear, or $2.5 million each.

While exchange rates and fiscalcalendars complicate comparisons to U.S. companies, let's do it anyway.Over roughly the same time frame, Microsoft employees generated$624,000 each; Google's performed 50 percent better, at $994,000,though still less than half as well as Nintendo employees. Nintendo'sprofits reached almost $1.5 billion, or $442,000 per employee, lastyear, compared with Microsoft's $177,000 and Google's $288,000.

Suchgaudy numbers aren't the result of mere penny-pinching. Mainly they'rea product of the strategic course Iwata has set. When he took over,PlayStation2 was king, and Microsoft, with its Xbox, was challengingSony in a technological arms race. But Iwata felt his competitors werefighting the wrong battle. Cramming more technology into consoles wouldonly make the games more expensive, harder to use, and worst of all,less fun.

"We decided that Nintendo was going to take anotherroute - game expansion," says Iwata, seated on the edge of a leatherchair, leaning over green tea in a three-piece suit, a strip of grayemerging along the part in his thick hair. He has an easy command ofEnglish but speaks through an interpreter. "We are not competingagainst Sony or Microsoft. We are battling the indifference of peoplewho have no interest in videogames."

The first test of thestrategy came in 2004 with the Nintendo DS. Handhelds weren't a newconcept. Nintendo had sold tens of millions of Game Boys. But Sony'sforthcoming PSP was being touted as a multimedia machine rich intechnology and with an ability to play movies. Iwata went cheaper,smaller (the size of the device), and broader (the intended market).The DS has side-by-side screens, one of which is a touchscreen; Wi-Fi;and voice recognition - all to make it approachable and communal.

Toput those features to use, Iwata conceived what would become one of thebestselling games for the DS, "Brain Age." Based on the brain-trainingregimen developed by a Japanese neuroscientist, "Brain Age" tests andimproves mental acuity. With sales of more than 12 million copies, thetitle has made the DS a hit in such unlikely places as nursing homes.Iwata also oversaw development of a talking cookbook "game." And ofcourse Miyamoto kicked in, creating the pet-care game "Nintendogs,"which has moved more than 14 million copies. As of this spring thecompany has sold more than 40 million DS devices, compared with 25million PSPs. So when it came time to launch the Wii, Nintendo alreadyhad a model to follow.

Breaking the mold

Thetypical life cycle of a game console goes something like this:Manufacturer produces or commissions the most sophisticated parts itcan come up with and hopes to milk them for half a decade. Both the PS3and Xbox 360, for example, have processors that are far more powerfulthan you'll find in most PCs. Each uses high-end graphics chips thatsupport high-definition games; Sony even includes a Blu-ray DVD drive.

Theboxes are expensive at first. Hard-core game freaks pay dearly to havea console early, but sales really jump in years two, three and four, asMoore's law and economies of scale drive prices down and third-partydevelopers release must-have games. By year five the buzz has begunabout the next generation, and the onetime latest, greatest machine canbe found at a local garage sale for $50. Rinse. Wash. Repeat.

TheWii busted that mold. First, Nintendo used off-the-shelf parts fromnumerous suppliers. Sony co-developed the PS3's screaming-fast3.2-gigahertz "cell" chip and does the manufacturing in its ownfacilities. Nintendo bought its 729-megahertz chip at Kmart. (Notreally. But it might as well have.) Its graphics are marginally betterthan the PS2 and the original Xbox, but they pale next to the PS3 andXbox 360. Taking this route enabled the company to introduce the Wii at$250 in the U.S. (vs. $599 for the PS3 and $399 for the 360) and stillturn a profit on every unit. And while a $250 sticker makes the Wiimore of an impulse buy than even an iPod, it's not the pricetag thatmakes it fly off shelves.

As with DS, the Wii comes with Wi-Fi,which gives customers access to the Internet, and features anincredibly addictive Mii channel. Players craft likenesses ofthemselves (or anyone else; the little cartoons you see throughout thisarticle are Miis), which then appear in boxing, tennis, golf and othergames.

Get inside the Wiimote

The only thing more funthan bowling in your living room with a bunch of friends is havingtheir digital counterparts cheer you on from the alley inside your TV.The experience makes you forget about graphics altogether. You don'tmind that your Mii is missing arms and legs.

And of course theWii has that innovative interface, the Wii Remote. The Wiimote, as ithas come to be known, features a speaker, a rumble pack that makes thedevice shake, and even a mystery feature or two that have yet to beexploited, like a microphone jack. (Wii Karaoke perhaps?)

But the Wiimote's magic really comes down to a $2.50 chip developed by a company in Cambridge, Mass., called Analog Devices Inc., (Charts) or ADI. Known as a three-axis accelerometer (see graphic),the chip precisely measures movement in three dimensions. At foursquare millimeters, several accelerometers would fit on your thumbnail.

Prying open a Wiimote, ADI applications engineer Harvey Weinbergexplains how the innards work. "This is actually a pretty cool piece ofengineering," he says. "There's a Bluetooth link in here, a littlebitty speaker, and an infrared camera. Of course the most importantpart is the accelerometer." The camera communicates with the light bar,which sits above or below the TV set. This is important because of aplayer's tendency to swing the remote wildly while, say, trying to hita baseball 450 feet. Each time the camera faces the TV, the machinereestablishes a player's whereabouts.

"The Nintendo guys weregoing to get large errors if they didn't figure out how to get absoluteposition," Weinberg says. "The camera resets the positional error. Butthey couldn't have gotten it to work with IR alone because most of thetime you're not facing the TV. They couldn't have gotten it to workreally good unless it was wireless. And they've aggressively chosencomponents that don't use a lot of power. The whole thing issynergistic."

Nintendo designed dozens of prototypes beforesettling on the Wiimote. Miyamoto says early versions looked more likea control pad. Some were whimsical, some complicated. Designers arrivedat the current version by coming back to Iwata's decree to battleindifference, not the competition.

Miyamoto realized it wasn'ta fear of gadgets that kept the average consumer from playing games."TV remotes are always sitting out on a coffee table or on the sofa,but videogame controllers - people don't want them lying around," hesays. "In that sense we thought we were losing to the TV remote. So wethought, What kind of controller can we create that won't make peopleafraid to touch it?"

A gaming pioneer

UnderMiyamoto's creative direction Nintendo has never had a problem comingup with great games. Pokémon, Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda -Nintendo titles have dominated the bestseller list for each Nintendoconsole. But that's not necessarily a good thing for the company.Third-party games increase consumer interest in the hardware, whichsells more software.

What's more, the console manufacturer getsa licensing fee for every third-party game sold, and it bears nodevelopment costs. "It really is pure profit," says Reggie Fils-Aime,the president and COO of Nintendo of America. "Third-party games canreally determine who wins."

Fils-Aime, an intense, 46-year-oldHaitian-American, introduced the Wii at a trade show in 2004 byannouncing, "My name is Reggie. I'm about kickin' ass, I'm about takin'names and we're about makin' games." That opening salvo lit a fireunder the gaming media and Nintendo fanboys, and now Fils-Aime istrying to do the same in the game-development community.

Where Sony went wrong

He's got a good pitch:Because the Wii isn't high-def, a game can cost as little as $5 millionto develop, compared with up to $20 million for the PS3. That message,and the fact that the Wii is clobbering the PS3 in the marketplace,seem to be getting across. While Nintendo's own titles still top theWii charts, third-party titles are selling well.

YvesGuillemot, president and CEO of French game publisher Ubisoft, saysNintendo has become the top console maker to work with. Two ofUbisoft's games, Rayman: Raving Rabbids and Red Steel (in which you usethe Wiimote like a sword), have sold nearly a million units each. "Welooked at the capabilities of the Wii early on and saw that it wassolving the most important element in the game industry -accessibility," Guillemot says.

Both the Wii and the DS,Guillemot adds, have Ubisoft developers thinking creatively about whatconstitutes a game. Later this year Ubisoft will unveil "My Life Coach"and "My Word Coach," titles developed in collaboration with abehaviorist and a linguist, respectively. "Nintendo has been very openwith us," says Guillemot. "They're willing to do things that are a bitcrazy. They see what we want to do and help us to make it as good aspossible."

It took a while, but the industry's largest publisher, EA (Charts),has also come around to the Wii. At EA headquarters in Silicon Valley,developers glow at how the Wiimote opens a new aspect of games like"The Godfather" and "Tiger Woods". The company developed a newWii-exclusive game, "MySims," due out in the fall; it is working withSteven Spielberg on a Wii title; and its latest FIFA soccer game willuse Mii characters. "Nintendo is a pioneer," says John Schappert, COOof EA Studios. "They're zigging when others are zagging. It's anothergrowth curve for the industry."

"We are successfully moving upthe blue ocean," Iwata says. "But once the blue ocean has become bigenough for so many people to notice, it is going to change its color tored."

The blue-ocean strategy

Talkabout lost in translation. Turns out there's a name for the line ofattack Iwata has been taking: the blue-ocean strategy. Two years agobusiness professors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne published a book bythat title. It theorizes that the most innovative companies have onething in common - they separate themselves from a throng of bloodycompetition (in the red ocean) and set out to create new markets (inthe blue ocean).

Starbucks is an example. There's always beencoffee; Howard Schultz gave us the coffee experience. Or Apple, whichgave us the iPod and iTunes - and created a new form of entertainment.

Iwataset his course before the book was published, but now that he's readit, he feels validated. "Even before someone invented the termblue-ocean strategy, we were exercising it," he says. "It is anunwritten company credo, something that runs deep in our DNA."

TheWii's success has done little to convince Microsoft executives they'reon the wrong course. The company is positioning itself for a worldwhere people play multiplayer games, download movies and control theirTVs through one box. "Nintendo has created a unique and innovativeexperience," says Peter Moore, who runs Microsoft's Xbox business. "Ilove the experience, the price point, and Nintendo content." ButMicrosoft, Moore adds, "provides experiences that Nintendo cannotprovide."

Of course Microsoft has little more to lose thanmoney, and there's plenty of that to go around. Sony is another matter.Gaming has been the company's profit center for years. Suddenly, wheneveryone thought the PS3 would solidify Sony's dominance, along camethe Wii. With an unheard-of price and few quality games to choose from,the PS3 has produced disappointing sales; the father of thePlayStation, Ken Kutaragi was recently forced to resign his post aschairman of Sony Computer Entertainment.

But while heacknowledges a slow start, Jack Tretton, the president and CEO of SonyComputer Entertainment America, thinks it's too early to start talkingwinners. "You have to give Nintendo credit for what they'veaccomplished," says Tretton, who's quick to point out that Sony hascome out with some innovative controllers too. "But if you look at theindustry, any industry, it doesn't typically go backwardstechnologically. The controller is innovative, but the Wii is basicallya repurposed GameCube. If you've built your console on an innovativecontroller, you have to ask yourself, Is that long term?"

Iwata knows the Wiimotealone won't sustain Nintendo forever. But Tretton's question nicelyencapsulates two distinct approaches toward innovation. Despite thefact that the PS2, with its seven-year-old innards, is still thetop-selling game console, Sony views the world through the eyes of anengineer, seeing an impressive proprietary technology (Betamax, MemoryStick, Blu-ray) and foisting it on the market.

From that pointof view, less technology is always a step backward. Nintendo takes itscues from the outside world - Miyamoto's garden, for example, which wasthe inspiration for the Nintendo game Pimkin. Or from the behavior ofeveryday people, like the way we leave our TV remotes on the couch. InMiyamoto's eyes technology is just a tool, and less of it is oftenmore. "What I want to do," he says, "is to make it so people canactually feel something unprecedented."
So what's next for thiscompany, so full of surprises? The Wii gives Nintendo a few options. Itcould stick with the current Wii for a few years until today's top-endtechnology falls to Kmart prices. At that point it could introduce aWii 2.0 with technology similar to today's PS3, but on the cheap. Itcould cut $50 off the sticker to compete with the price cuts that areundoubtedly coming from Sony and Microsoft.

But that'sred-ocean thinking. Iwata wants to keep innovating, to do for gamingwhat Starbucks has done for coffee or Apple has done for music. "Therelationship with the Mac or PC to iTunes and the iPod," he says, "thatkind of combination may be possible between DS and Wii."

UntilNintendo gets more Wiis on retail shelves, all that is theoretical.Iwata says no single bottleneck has caused the shortage, and that hasmade the problem harder to solve. Because it was targeting a marketthat didn't exist, the company had no idea how popular the machinewould be. And nobody could have known the Wii would still be selling sowell as summer approaches.

That kind of thing just doesn'thappen in the Christmas-centric world of gaming. "We cannot simply make1.5 times as much or two times as much," he says. "When you're makingone million a month already, getting to 1.5 million or two million isnot very easy."

No, not easy. But necessary. So hurry up, Nintendo. My grandma is waiting.

这篇文章大致说的是WII利用革命的游戏方式取得很大的成功，但是其性能低下与非高清标准可能导致未来前景暗淡。

软饭就不操这个心了……等任饭人才来翻……

顺便赞一下结尾： So hurry up, Nintendo. My grandma is waiting.

我刚才找了好久都找不到，回tg一看

看懂个大概就可以了．．．．:D
Theword "Nintendo" is an amalgamation of three symbols: nin, meaning"leave to"; ten, for "heaven"; and do, "company." The most commontranslation in Kyoto is "the company that leaves to heaven."

看见一大片鸡肠就发昏
知道重点就好了

真长
My grandma is waiting

封面图都要强调带腕带的重要性

昨天已经看到封面，还以为是恶搞图

grandma就好这口:D

考虑到《财富》的读者群，这文关注的是什么大概也清楚。大部分内容对常关注游戏产业的人而言是老调重弹罢了

估计下周我那慈祥的外报阅读老师会摸出这本杂志来的。。。

篇幅过大。。。
放弃翻译

引用:

原帖由 tsorochi 于 2007-6-1 21:43 发表
篇幅过大。。。
放弃翻译

+1

引用:

原帖由 brucett 于 2007-6-1 20:59 发表
这篇文章大致说的是WII利用革命的游戏方式取得很大的成功，但是其性能低下与非高清标准可能导致未来前景暗淡。

赢了今天，输了明天。。。。是这意思不？