Slashdot Mirror
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
"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.
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
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