Simplicity is the Winning Formula in Technology

There are so many things that these days try to become three times more complicated than they need to be and utilize every aspect of the newest in technology. For years, it’s been about jumping ahead and as we finally head towards a leveling off point, we’re seeing hundreds of different products hitting the market that, even with exciting new technology, exploit the chance to appear simplistic.

The Aesthetics of Simplicity

Everything is smaller these days. It’s all mute colors and sleek, crisp emptiness. You see living rooms lined with slim, 42 inch wall mounted televisions, jet-black sofas and a single glass coffee table. After the excesses of the 70s and 80s it appears that coziness has given way to efficiency. The same can be said for our entertainment and media as well.

Genre films today are one of two things – exploitative mish-mashes of a director’s childhood or single minded throwbacks to the good old days. There isn’t much difference, except that there are more and more films that simply try to do one thing in a simple fashion. Epic, complex explosions of film are less often displayed (or made well), replaced by the simple, three or four act indie films that still manage to wholly entertain.

Music has done something similar in recent years. As far as the genres managed to take rock and hip hop music, it’s all starting to coil back in, finding inspiration in classic sounds and lo-fi recording methods. If the White Stripes, Arctic Monkeys, and Kooks can all produce music that floods the charts with high end tracks by emulating the best of their musical heroes and not once using an electronic synth board (Okay, there’s a keyboard in there sometimes), we’re coming along nicely.

The point is that everything is smoother and sleeker now. All of that fluff and sticky packaging that seemed to attach itself to just about everything in the 1990s has disappeared leaving a 2 ounce black iPod in our pockets, right alongside the matchbook sized cell phone.

Top End Tech Doesn’t Work

But, if electronics, music and film are all getting smaller and simpler, what about the technology that supports them? There are so many different thins that people are interested in having for their portable electronics every day, but what about the speed and efficiency that they value more. It’s showing us more and more why that high end technology isn’t really necessary anymore.

I’m going to use video gaming technology to make my point here. The Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 are both consoles that tout the highest end technology in the industry, with massive technical specs and enough power to run a small restaurant. They are large, loud, and way too powerful for any game that a publisher could possibly release. They want HD televisions, big sound equipment, wireless broadband internet access, and a dozen other things that not everyone can afford or wants to bother trying to afford.

Enter the Nintendo Wii with its much small, much cheaper design. The graphical capacity of the Wii is almost the same as its predecessor the Gamecube and doesn’t operate on nearly the same standards. It requires less support, less money, and less tech happy exploitation of finances. The sole selling point of the Wii is its controller and the fun factor only Nintendo can offer for its games.

I’m not trying to sell it here though. I find the Xbox 360 a great machine with a much better collection of games. The question is – why does the Wii sell so much better? It’s not just the price. The Playstation console cost a bundle back in 1995 and still managed to sell amazingly well because it was revolutionary and did something no console had done before, 3D and high capacity storage.

The newest game consoles are too big and beefy and offer too much technology for an already tech-drunk society. We have everything available to us these days and for that reason, why spend another $600 for something that does all sorts of stuff we don’t have the time and money for. Why not just buy the Wii for less and have fun?

What Works?

And so, it is the technological inferior products that do the best on the market. The products that offer the easiest interface, most attractive design, and lowest price points are going to sell a lot better than anything else on the market. The iPod has never been the best MP3 player on the market, but it’s always been the most straightforward, accessible and stylish option and so it continues to sell amazingly well. The Wii is not the biggest nor the most impressive of gaming consoles, but it is the most fun and offers a simple, novel approach to gaming that has people actually losing weight, so it’s outselling the competition in volumes.

Who knows where the next generations of entertainment and technological media will take us. It’s been postulated that the current generation of gaming technology will last for a decade. It has to if it wants to last long enough to be useful in the general market. Nintendo can offer new products whenever they think of a great new idea, but Sony and Microsoft have sunk enough money into their consoles that they must ensure they are given the time needed to saturate the market, a prospect that might take as long as a decade.

The iPhone is on the way as well, the newest addition from Apple that will release next week to take the phone market by storm. Simplicity, functionality, and sleek coolness are the name of the game for Apple and the market has always responded kindly.