When to respond to technological platform changes: empirical evidence from the video game industry

Generational platform innovations prompt complementors to adapt their product development strategies. This paper examines how the speed of response to such platform changes affects new product quality and how this relationship is shaped by the complementor’s prior experience. Adopting a contingency perspective on the strategy-by-doing literature, we differentiate between depth of experience (repeated NPD experience with the same platform generation) and breadth of experience (accumulation of NPD experience across different generations), and analyse their interplay with the radicalness of the platform innovation. Using panel data from 1,014 PC video games released by 378 developers between 1995 and 2014 in response to DirectX platform generations and updates, we find that faster responses lead to higher product quality for complementors with greater depth of experience in incremental platform innovation contexts. In contrast, for radical platform changes, faster responses are harmful for complementors with a greater breadth of experience, suggesting that translating and integrating diverse platform knowledge into effective responses requires more time. Our findings contribute to research on platform evolution and strategy-by-doing by clarifying when faster technology responses help (or hinder) product performance in generational platform contexts.