Alexa, Nintendo Wii, and Other Products Defeated Mostly By Infrastructure

 I saw this little article in an affiliate marketing newsletter I sometimes get.  I hadn't really thought Alexa was a colossal boondoggle for Amazon, but I guess maybe it is:

It was a huge deal when Amazon released the Echo in 2014. The Alexa voice assistant would take on the iPhone's “Siri” and revolutionize how we do… everything.

With the opening of the Alexa skills app store, Amazon hoped to foster the same kind of third-party innovation Apple managed to do with its app store. The dream was to have Alexa run your entire house, from lights to garage door to microwave… all via voice control.

Alexa was immediately useful, sparking huge early interest, resulting in over 100 million Echo units sold during the first four years. But while many dreams about what a voice assistant could be became a reality, Alexa is now considered a colossal failure.

Why? Amazon’s “Alexa” division is on track to lose $10 billion this year. Amazon sold Alexa units at cost, hoping that getting them “out there” would increase sales on Amazon.

That hasn’t happened. Maybe the novelty factor wore off… or people just realized that sitting down at your computer to make your order was faster than Alexa reading two minutes of copy about dishwasher pellets to ensure you're ordering the right brand.

People may have also realized that flicking the light switch was easier than asking Alexa.

Some tech analysts believe Alexa’s critical weakness is that Amazon does not own its platform. They don’t have an operating system like Microsoft or Apple… or a mobile platform like Google’s android or iOS.

Or, as Benedict Evans rather pessimistically put it: "Amazon has succeeded in selling a huge number of glorified clock radios!"

To see how desperate they are to get people to adopt these things, they had a sale in December where if you buy a Music Unlimited subscription you get an Echo Dot for a buck.

You can see why they're losing billions when they're basically giving these away as door prizes.

The sad decline of the Echo reminded me of the Nintendo Wii.  That was the one that had the motion capture gimmick where essentially you were supposed to be the controller.  It was a cool idea and the Wii Sports game it came with was really fun, so fun that after buying a Wii for my sisters, I bought one for myself.

But soon the novelty wore off and the problem, I realized, was besides Wii Sports there weren't many games that took full advantage of the technology.  Maybe some of it was Nintendo didn't want to share a lot of details of their tech with outside companies.  Or maybe software companies were just too lazy to make versions of their games specifically tailored for the Wii.

The point is, the motion capture thing didn't really take hold because it was only half-assedly exploited.  So it became a fad and then largely faded away.  I think the Nintendo Switch has a similar thing and there are virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift, but those are still not largely adopted.

The problem with the Wii was similar to what had happened about 20 years earlier with the "Power Glove" for the Nintendo.  That was a glove you wear that had controls so you could in theory control your game with it and even make your character or car or whatever move by waving your hand around.

Except it was rushed to market and so there weren't many games that could use it and some of those ones that could didn't work great.  So other than a line in the goofy movie The Wizard, most people don't really remember the Power Glove anymore.

By the same token, this article about Alexa seems to be saying kind it's meeting the same kind of demise.  Sure with an Echo or Echo Dot Alexa can do stuff...but only if you have the right stuff for it to work.  I mean, if I buy an Echo, Alexa can't turn on my lights or appliances, because they're old and not "smart" products.  And who's going to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars upgrading everything just so you can tell a machine to turn on the lights or whatever?  Those of us in apartments can't even do that unless we get permission from the landlord and then if we move out in a few months it'd all be for naught.

I did see where I could get a "smart plug" that works with an app so I could plug that in and use my phone to turn the lights on.  But how often would I really use that?  I mean sure maybe I could use it when I get home to turn the lights on before I get in the door, but the hallway of my building is usually lit and my light switch is just inside the door, so that's not important.  Mostly my apartment is small enough that it'd probably be easier to just get up and flip the switch than get out my phone, load an app, and tell it to do the thing.

The article brings up the problem with trying to use voice commands for shopping.  I haven't really tried it though I probably could on my phone.  But really I think it's easier to use the computer (or phone) and just find what I want.  It's easier for me to look at the screen and scroll around and stuff than trying to listen to Alexa report on everything.

The GPS navigator in my car has a voice feature, but I don't use it a lot.  The reason is it's pretty wonky.  I usually have to say "Voice Commands" 3-4 times just to activate it.  Then it's bulky getting it to do what I want unless it's just "Go Home."  It's usually quicker and easier to just use my fingers.  That's probably how it is for a lot of people with these Echo devices and so forth.

Of course these devices would have their uses.  Like for someone who's paralyzed or blind and so can't really use the normal way.  Or people with other mobility, accessibility issues.  But that's not a huge market.

It's not to say this technology is stupid or pointless or bad; it's just not efficient enough for mass consumption.  Sometimes you have a technology that is a good idea in theory but the practical applications don't work out for one reason or another.  For most of these things, what you really need is the infrastructure to make it easy to use.  Like with the Echo, you need the lights and other things that can respond to Alexa.  With the Wii and Power Glove, you needed games that worked well and utilized their special features.

Part of the problem for EVs and previous attempts at non-gas-powered cars like hydrogen fuel cells is the infrastructure.  You need stations where people can charge their non-gas-using cars or it's all pretty pointless.  Though electric cars are gaining ground, it's still pretty hard for someone like me to use one.  I don't have a garage or outdoor plug where I could charge the car up and the nearest charging stations are a Walmart in Novi almost 10 miles away, whereas the nearest gas station is about a block away.  This Business Insider article talks about trying to create a national network for plugs on highways, but of course there would still be a challenge for many. My local news had a story a few days ago about a new "EV Corridor" between Kalamazoo, Michigan and Toronto; they're installing free charging stations along the highways there so people can stop to charge EVs.  Still, that's just a small part of the thousands and thousands of miles of roads you'd need to equip to really make it easy for people to use EVs.  Hydrogen faces even more of an uphill battle because you'd need specially equipped stations.

There was a brief period when carmakers were excited about E85, the "FlexFuel" that features about 15% corn alcohol.  My first Focus didn't have E85 capability, but the 2014 Focus I bought last year did.  So I thought I'd try it, especially when I got some additive on Amazon Vine that would supposedly make it better.  But like these other things there are too many drawbacks to E85.  It is cheaper than regular gasoline (from about $0.40-$1.00 per gallon depending on where you go) but there aren't a lot of stations that have it.  Also, it's not great for your car's engine.  Even with that additive from Vine, my car's gas mileage was going down over 1mpg and maybe it was my imagination that the engine didn't run as smoothly.  The other problem was when carmakers got excited about E85, so did farmers and then there was the problem of either needing a lot more corn or having less corn for feeding livestock and such.  So while it seemed like a good idea, it turned out not to be and now when I go to stations with E85, that pump is usually idle or taken by someone who probably went inside to use the bathroom or buy cigarettes and/or coffee.  But there obviously still has to be some demand or stations wouldn't have it, right?

Recently I got an old Susan B Anthony dollar in some change from a car wash.  Part of the problem with dollar coins is that Americans are spoiled babies who don't like change, ie the metric system.  But also there's the practical reason that dollar coins can be kinda annoying.  I mean those Susan B Anthony ones look like quarters (so much so that it was mixed in with a bunch of quarters) so if I give it to some fast food jockey he/she will probably think it's a quarter and then mumble that I didn't give them enough money.  And when I say it's a dollar coin they'll just stare dumbly and mumble incoherently.  And going to a bank to get a dollar bill for it is kind of a waste of time, innit?  And there aren't really any machines that would take it as a dollar coin.  I couldn't put it in the laundry machines in my building or the soda machines at Walmart or something.  The latter issue is really a big reason those dollar coins don't catch on.  If I can't use it for my laundry or to get a pop, how much good is it?  That's part of the infrastructure that needs set up for that to work.

When electricity was "discovered" and telephones were invented, they would never have caught on without the infrastructure being developed.  The same for regular/cable/satellite TV, cell phones, and the Internet.  If you don't put the infrastructure in place, those technologies might be revolutionary, but useless.  For a single product like the Echo or Wii it can be difficult to get that infrastructure in place because you're largely leaving it up to the consumer.  Or for electric/hydrogen cell cars you're up against the deep pockets of Big Oil, who don't really want to share the market.

An added problem for Echo and similar things is all this "AI" stuff now.  Compared to ChatGPT, Alexa, Siri, and whatever else seem pretty old school.  Why get an Echo or whatever the Apple & Google equivalents are when they're already outdated tech?

Amazon has dumped a lot of money into Alexa tech, but it seems like it's likely to end up with the Wii, Power Glove, virtual reality, E85 gas, Google Glass, hydrogen cell cars, and plenty of other things in the junkyard of good ideas that don't have the infrastructure to become a standard.