Week 3 EOC: Boston Consulting Group - Video Games

There are so many different video game manufacturers in the industry now, I honestly don’t know where to start. The video game s a very lucrative market, especially this year, Microsoft “dominated by sales of the Xbox video game system and related products. Revenue from that division grew 15 percent to $4.24 billion from the year-earlier period, reflecting strong sales of the Xbox 360 console, the Kinect game sensor and the Xbox Live online game service.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/technology/weak-sales-of-pcs-hurt-microsofts-income.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=microsoft%20video%20games&st=cse) This is one part of the company that never really suffers and just keeps improving, not only for Microsoft but Nintendo and many other manufacturers as well like Sony. Even though, according to NY Times, “In recent years Sony has been overtaken by more nimble rivals like Apple, which has surpassed Sony in digital music players; Nintendo, which leads Sony in gaming” (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/sony_corporation/index.html?scp=1&sq=nintendo%20revenue&st=cse) "SBUs change their positions in the growth-share matrix... The company needs to add new products and units continuously so that some of them will become stars and, eventually, cash cows that will help finance other SBUs." (Marketing an Introduction, Armstrong Kotler, page45) According to CNET Reviews, if we were to make a BCG analysis for the video game market; the XBOX 360 Kinect would be our cash cow; the Wii would be the Star; the Question Mark would be the Sony PlayStation 3; and the Dog would be a Nintendo 3DS. Of course everyone’s opinion is different but according to statics and peoples opinion this is the best possible analysis.