4 ms·

It sounds like the marketing was all wrong. They wanted to sell it as a premium feature for DVD players, but consumers shopping for a DVD player weren't interes

It sounds like the marketing was all wrong. They wanted to sell it as a premium feature for DVD players, but consumers shopping for a DVD player weren't interested in a pricey upsell to play a tiny number of games and whatever other features they bundled. What they should have done was position it as a premium games machine that included a "free" DVD player. Sony had massive success with this approach for the PlayStation 2, which I would guess was the first DVD player that most of its purchasers had owned.

dfxm12 6y ago
consumers shopping for a DVD player weren't interested in a pricey upsell to play a tiny number of games Yeah, people found this out in 1993 via the Pioneer LaserActive [0]. Nuon's angle was a little different though. They were trying to triple dip with licensing - license to the companies who make DVD players, the devs who make videogames as well as to movie studios for the DVD interactive features. That way, maybe they solve the problem of having to sell their own hardware at a loss to make it up in game sales (as most console makers do). Nintendo had done something like this in the past, licensing out their hardware to Sharp, who made the Twin Famicom and a TV with an NES built-in and would do it around the same time with the Panasonic Q GameCube. It looks like they did the work in terms of getting in good with the hardware side, but the software side left a lot to be desired. As close as they were working with Toshiba, they should've also been working with EA... 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserActive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserActive
JohnBooty 6y ago
What they should have done was position it as a premium games machine that included a "free" DVD player. I can't agree with this at all. They would have been an utter nobody with zero history and zero name recognition going up against the absolute titans of the gaming industry with decades of experience, consumer brand recognition, and developer relations. When you are fighting a superior foe, frontal assaults don't work. Now, in Nuon's case... the non-frontal assault didn't work either. But it was probably their only shot and it might have worked if they could have made it to market sooner.

dfxm12 6y ago

consumers shopping for a DVD player weren't interested in a pricey upsell to play a tiny number of games Yeah, people found this out in 1993 via the Pioneer LaserActive [0]. Nuon's angle was a little different though. They were trying to triple dip with licensing - license to the companies who make DVD players, the devs who make videogames as well as to movie studios for the DVD interactive features. That way, maybe they solve the problem of having to sell their own hardware at a loss to make it up in game sales (as most console makers do). Nintendo had done something like this in the past, licensing out their hardware to Sharp, who made the Twin Famicom and a TV with an NES built-in and would do it around the same time with the Panasonic Q GameCube. It looks like they did the work in terms of getting in good with the hardware side, but the software side left a lot to be desired. As close as they were working with Toshiba, they should've also been working with EA... 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserActive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserActive

JohnBooty 6y ago

What they should have done was position it as a premium games machine that included a "free" DVD player. I can't agree with this at all. They would have been an utter nobody with zero history and zero name recognition going up against the absolute titans of the gaming industry with decades of experience, consumer brand recognition, and developer relations. When you are fighting a superior foe, frontal assaults don't work. Now, in Nuon's case... the non-frontal assault didn't work either. But it was probably their only shot and it might have worked if they could have made it to market sooner.