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GameCube Production to Halt
avayre writes "Nintendo is to press the pause button on production of its GameCube consoles while it clears inventory of unsold machines. the company's president said on Thursday. But Satoru Iwata promised the struggling games company was developing a radical new product to be announced next year -- however he gave few details save to say it would be a departure from mainstream gaming consoles 'that will have a big impact on the world.'" My prediction is that it's just downtime until Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles ships. That'll help move those units that are gathering dust.
Seems to be a lot of multi-player games to me.
"Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home" - Cicero
I did see the numbers saying Gamecube was maybe 5-10% ahead of Xbox worldwide but I can't seem to find them. I found this though
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..the overall sales figures (which, interestingly, put Cube and Xbox almost neck and neck on a global level, with around 9.5 million units each - so why are so many US-based analysts desperate to write off the Cube?)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/31836.htm
Which means I can't say the Gamecube is outselling Xbox but neither is the reverse true. Surprised?
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NINTENDO IS NOT STRUGGLING. They were Nikkei's company of the year last year. The reason their stock has lost ground was because they are so heavily invested in the dollar, which took a beating by the yen. They have not operated at a loss in over two decades. They have, at last number I got, 3 billion in the bank, and last year they made more money than SCE. They are, as last I heard, neck and neck with Xbox in the US, but numbers are hard to come by because a lot of retail release figures exclude places such as Walmart, Nintendo's top distributor. Yes, in Europe they are struggling, but they are doing fine and dandy everywhere else.
For a place that complains about so much FUD, you would think people would know the difference between Sega (operating at a loss for a decade with millions in red) and Nintendo. It's astounding.
You've got to be kidding. The GameBoy Advance is the hottest selling machine in the world. The SP is outselling even the PS2 right now.
Look at GAF.
There is NOT a more money in the home console market. Production costs for GameBoy Advance titles are incredibly low, and sales ratios are very high. On average, you make more money on an average selling GameBoy game than a high-selling console game. Why else would any Joe-Schmo be able to develop his own GameBoy games? I must know at least 3 independent GameBoy development companies.
Even if the Gamecube sells a third as many units as the PS2 has, the GameBoy Advance will still sell more units than the PS2 has. Until the PSP arrives, we don't know how things will turn out. However, anyone that doesn't think that Nintendo's working on a portable that will be as equally powerful as the the Sony device, is definately a fool.
Some of you guys are such douches. Where do you come up with this stuff?
This new product is going to be announced in early 2004. The N5 is going to ship in 2005 or early 2006 (according to Nintendo at the same press conferance where they mentioned the new technology for 2004.)
This alone suggests strongly that they are not talking about the N5, simply because they wouldn't want to focus attention on a console that isn't coming out for over a year.
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