Each Segues column starts with something tech-related before quickly branching out from there into a tangentially related thread. These articles are born from my thought and speech patterns that regularly contain quickfire transitions. For one of my birthdays, a friend made me a crown that said “King of the Segues.” Actually, it said “King of the Segways” and that was the day we learned how to spell segue correctly.
“The wise learn many things from their enemies.” Aristophanes said this over 2000 years ago, but I don’t think he could’ve been prescient enough to know how aptly this saying applies to the world of mobile gaming, social networks, and more today. Specialization is falling away to the general trend of broad appeal, which creates a blending of everything into one easily-recognizable amalgamation.
Smartphones, and obviously superphones, are fast becoming the biggest competitors to more traditional mobile gaming devices like the Nintendo DS and the PlayStation Portable (PSP). Back in April, analytics firm Flurry discovered some numbers that probably made Nintendo company president Satoru Iwata sweat little digital bullets. According to the graphs below, while iOS and Androids game sales grew an amazing 15 percent, Nintendo DS’s sales declined by a whopping 13 percent.
Those percentage jumps and drops equals hundreds of millions of dollars. At the 2011 Game Developers Conference, Iwata tried to blow off these noteworthy numbers by saying “these platforms have no motivation to maintain the value of gaming”. With an approximately $300 million combined loss in mobile gaming sales for Nintendo and PlayStation, that statement is delusional, blindly hopeful, or desperately trying to be convincing. Like the PSP, which can access the internet and play movies, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Nintendo release an Nintendo DS that can do much more than act as a gaming device. Their console system is already stretching its pixilated wings with applications like Netflix, much like the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, to become a more integrated multimedia device. PlayStation and Xbox have already updated their consoles to include access to social network sites like Twitter and Facebook. Facebook itself seeks to become a more inclusive experience on a regular basis, and they now have given their users one more reason to have the addictive social site become the most prevalent place on the internet.
Facebook introduced a more robust messaging system to a small pocket of its users in November, 2010, and then began a slow rollout of it to all users starting in February. The social networking site gives an @facebook.com email address to every person on Facebook, so “people can share with friends over email, whether they’re on Facebook or not.” That means this new messaging system allows people to not only talk to their friends on Facebook in a more efficient and organized way, but reach those holdouts who refuse to enter the social network fray. From there, it might not be long until people use the Facebook email system as their sole email client. Facebook has already become the go-to place for many users, marking its place as the home page for many people when browsers start up. A recent study by the Pew Research Center claims that when compared to non-Facebook users, Facebook users “are more trusting than others”, “have more close relationships”, and “get more social support than other people.” Could removing the need for multiple communication methods be part of the reason for this level of bonding through Facebook? Assimilating (ominous reference to the Borg aside) what makes something else successful to make it your own goes far outside of Facebook or even technology and happens regularly now in other avenues, such as the changing faces of television networks.
The point of specialty TV networks is disappearing. Cooking shows appear on SyFy (Quantum Kitchen isn’t science fiction even if the host Marcel Vigneron does sport a Wolverine-like hairdo), live action shows appear on Cartoon Network more often now, and multiple networks were introduced in the last couple of years that all seemingly exist solely to show the same reruns of the same dramas and sitcoms. Brand identity isn’t widening as much as its disappearing. What used to be the SciFi Channel is now the SyFy Channel and people are still left trying to figure out what that name means two years after the change. The reason for the change was stated to be one of rebranding to reach out to a bigger market than people who think of SciFi as nothing more than “space, aliens and the future” as SyFy president David Howe told the New York Times. The Daily Show has become known, much to Jon Stewart’s chagrin, as a reputable news source. Fox News tries (failingly, I might add) to enter into the comedy world themselves with their show Red Eye. TV networks are watching what’s working elsewhere, and trying their hand at making their own versions. Sometimes, these experiments work like with the reality competition show about special effects makeup creators Face Off that was a ratings hit for SyFy. Sometimes, these shows fail like with the canceled live-action show Unnatural History on Cartoon Network.
There’s obviously a proven track record of success for incorporating “the other guy’s” idea even if it makes explaining what you do that much more complicated if you do a bit of everything. Competition is supposed to breed innovation though, and it looks like more and more, creating innovative products means working off of what someone else created first whether it fits your established identity or not. However, as someone who paraphrased what Herman Melville originally said, “It’s better to fail when doing something original than succeed at imitating others.”
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