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Nintendo Announces Gamecube Launch Numbers
cbirdsong64 writes: "Planet Gamecube has a story about the Gamecube launch quantities for the U.S. and Japan. Apparently, the Japanese launch will consist of 500,000 Gamecubes, all purple. Nearly 900,000 Gamecubes will be shipped this year in Japan. The North American launch will have 1.1 million (!!) units availiable, with no colors announced. The Big N plans to ship a total of four million Gamecubes worldwide by March 2002. They're doing a whole lot better than Sony did last Christmas." Maybe when the much-anticipated Gamecube ships, I can pick up a discounted PS2 and GT3 :)
Gamespot also has an article about the Gamecube here...but the part where it mentions the Panasonic media unit I've shamelessly ripped:
So there you have it.
-Julius X
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
You know, we have it very good with Sony as the king of the hill nowadays. How many people here remember the nintendo-dominated 80s? Nintendo with a monopoly has to be scariest thing in the world. Here are some highlights on Nintendo in 80s:
1) The whole Zelda 2 x-mas diabocle. They didn't ship nearly as many units as demanded, hence this rose the price considerably. In fact, I remember 20/20s report, where they even found a warehouse of Zelda 2 cartridges that were just gathering dust, while mobs were trying to buy the game!
2) The fact that they COMPLETELY underestimate the intellects of the US market! How many RPGs were ported to the US? (As an example, look at the FF series and the Dragon Quest/Warrior series.) Whatever came to the US was either dumbed down or censored heavily. Nintendo never felt that US market was mature enough for some of their best games. Super Mario 2 is another example, where it wasn't ported to the US, because Nintendo thought it was too hard for americans.
3) The 2+ year lag between US and Japanese releases. Nintendo NEVER wanted to release US games anytime near their Japanese release dates. I don't even know why.
4) The awful, slave-like licensing agreements. Forget about Microsoft, the Big N didn't allow anyone to even buy blank cartridges without paying them a MAJOR licensing fee (and then they'd have the nerve to call their licensing fee the "Nintendo Seal of Quality.") Remember Tengen? They reverse-engineered the NES system, made their own black cartridges (including a superior Tetris) and were almost sued out existence by Nintendo! (Nintendo also made newer NES consoles not work with their system)
5)Then there's the Game Genie. Whereas other console makers (SEGA) embraced it, Nintendo took Galoob to court and kept the Game Genie in the court system for over a year. I remember having to order mine from Canada to get it.
6) Nintendo treats their 3rd party developers like shit and always has. That's why Square left, and why there are almost NO third party apps coming from Nintendo. (and that's true... come on, what NON-NINTENDO game do you want for the gamecube?)
Those are just some highlights off the top of my head. But let me tell you, if I had to choose between Nintendo or Sony, (or even nintendo vs MS), I will NEVER EVER CHOOSE Nintendo. With Sony, we have tons of GREAT RPGs coming over very quickly, fast translations, a company that has a VERY lax licensing policy, and most importantly, a company that doesn't think their market is a bunch of idiots.
"They're doing a whole lot better than Sony did last Christmas."
Er, well, they haven't sold any yet!
I seem to remember Sony saying they were going to have loads available too.
Wouldn't it be wise to wait until Christmas before making a comment like that?
Trollish as you may be, I'll respond.
You're missing the point. The numbers mean jack. It's the performance that counts. What you're failing to realize is that 333MHz on dedicated hardware running games that are designed to specifically run on that hardware will perform VERY nicely. PC processors have to be faster because they have more overhead involved in producing the same output. Why do you think you have to have a system that's ludicrously more powerful than a console in order to emulate that console? Because the PC isn't designed to run those games. It's designed to run lots of software meeting varying specs. Software that's written for an explicit set of hardware is very efficient, as opposed to software that has to run on umpteem billion hardware configurations.
If they can get the desired performance out of a 333, I'm all for it. Saves me $200 at Best Buy.
Think first, post later.
Not all 1.1 million units are launch units. 800,000 are for the launch, while the other 300K are for the rest of the month. You can see those details at http://cube.ign.com/news/37001.html. It's nice to see that Nintendo learned from Sony's mistake last year.
"Chances of RHIC-induced Armageddon are exceedingly rare, but... you never know." - MIT Physicist Bob Jaffe
I'll be far more interested to hear the launch #'s in say, January 2002. :)
What's interesting is that as much as the popular press likes to talk about the X-Box being more powerful, most observers at E3 pegged GameCube as having better graphics (not to mention games, where there's no comparison).
It's $100 cheaper, has much better games, it's a lot smaller, has a better controller -- what more do you want?
Gamecube all the way...
--- egomaniac
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
Right now, Nintendo seems to be the only company that really gets how important multiplayer is.
Dreamcast started to get the right idea, with 4 ports, but I think they had more of a PSX vibe going on, with as many or more 2 player than 4 player games around. I think X-box might end up in a similar fashion even with 4 ports, since its PC heritage doesn't have a good multiplayer tradition either. And PS2, where you need a multitap for that? Feh. Few gamemakers are anxious to support anything but out of the box hardware.
Yes, online console gaming has a big future, but blasting 2 or 3 buddies to smithereens while talking trash, all on the couch will beat out getting your ass handed to you by faceless, lamely-nicknamed punks who spend way too many hours at this stuff.
--
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
The last console I bought was a SNES, and since my computer can do everything the new consoles can do and a whole freakin lot more I doubt that I'll ever buy another. But as long as people have money to burn I guess it'll never stop.
In case anyone else is as clueless as I was -- and want to see what this thing looks like.... see here and a larger version .
peace
Yea, it's pretty cool looking. Kinda like a techno-looking GameCube. Check it out here. http://cube.ign.com/news/36765.html
8 bit: NES, SMS
16-bit: Genesis, SNES (TG-16 failed)
32-bit: PlayStation, Nintendo 64 (Saturn failed)
64-bit: PlayStation 2, ??? (DreamCast failed)
So there's really only room for one more: XBox or GameCube. Given:
I think that Nintendo is going to eat Microsoft's lunch.
--Bradley
--Bradley