GAME Changer: The Impact of the Collapsing High Street:
Tipping points are a peculiar thing. They always seem obvious in hindsight - but it's next to impossible to see them coming in advance, or even to recognise them when they actually turn up. Yet almost every market transition - indeed, almost every transition of any description - has its tipping point, a moment where the various factors pushing in a certain direction become inexorable.
Because this is such an alluring concept for journalists, we've got a terrible habit of labelling all sorts of things as being tipping points, when they're almost certainly nothing of the sort. Every decent Android handset that comes out is the "tipping point" that'll swing the mobile market in Google's favour. Every attempt by Microsoft or Sony to appeal to a casual market is a "tipping point" that'll demolish all that Nintendo has wrought. "Is this the tipping point for social games?", we wonder aloud every time Facebook or Zynga makes a pronouncement, never entirely clear what's being tipped or what it's being tipped into.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying - when someone starts banging on about tipping points, unless they're talking in academic hindsight, they're probably best ignored. So, bearing in mind my own admonition on this matter, I'm not going to describe what's happening to UK retail right now as a "tipping point". It's more complex than that, and perhaps more worrying.
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