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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.
I'm worried that more and more we're going to get a lot less choices as far as the quality of the gaming consoles of the future, and seeing the 100-ton gorilla that is Nintendo going downhill really doesn't do much for the future outlook.
Nintendo has been screwing the pooch for awhile with their game marketing. Let's face it, no one is spending $200+ for their eight years or younger to play video games when they're just as happy with a Sega Genesis/Nomad or the SNES. This is the market that the cube has been cavorting with since it's release. (and this is the impression they want you to have, based on the fact that the included games would be super mario kart.. etc..)
They would do well to learn from history just one time. Atari 2600's sucked compared to the other consoles released in the early-eighties (Colecovision was probably my favorite at the time), but the games catered to everyone. Think of a topic or something you would like to do and most likely there was an Atari 2600 game for it. Even my mother-in-law was highly addicted to Kaboom -- that speaks greatly of the breadth of experience to be had with one little black box. Whether it be the Atari vs. Coleco, NES vs. Sega Master System (nice machine, no friggin games), SNES vs. Genesis, or Playstation vs. Saturn the thing to know is better hardware doesn't mean jack. It's all about the content, people can make due with an adequate interface.
If Nintendo doesn't want to make consoles anymore we'll be fine, because they currently are sucking at it completely. We are losing nothing -- their games suck.. AND.. if they think they can make money by just doing the games, well think again! The reason Nintendo is sucking isn't because the Game Cube isn't a nice box, it's that the GAMES suck. Why exactly would we buy their games any more than we do now if they came out on a Playstation 2 or XBox? Sega has already tried this move, and it's not working for them.
- Mind