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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.
So is it just me, or does this remind anyone else of the whole Sega kaboozle - Genesis went down, Sega released the radical Dreamcast, and... well everyone knows what happened next...
That will get a bunch of them to sell.
They stack well in a server room!
Yes, clearly, once one gets old enough one has no use for anything but gratuitous violence. :) I personally like the "mostly harmless" adventure games, like mario and zelda, even with their lack of blood and gore, because the puzzles are just as interesting and challenging as they are in more "adult" games.
think *anime*
Struggling games company? Yes the GameCube isn't selling well but that does not mean that Nintendo is struggling. Far from it. In fact just the other day at PlanetGameCube they posted a story about Nintendo posting a profit. Doesn't sound like struggling to me.
"Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home" - Cicero
As I recall, when Nintendo announced GC at E3 a few years ago, they made the statement that it was aimed at anyone who enjoys playing games. I'm 23, I own a gamecube, with ambitions to buy the other 2 systems (PS2 for FF, Xbox for Steel Battalion), and out of all the games I've played on any system, Nintendo games keep my attention longer than any of them, and are way more innovative and fun. As far as most of the games having cartoony graphics, the only game I can think of like that is Zelda, and since you mentioned "harmless adventure games", I think you should go back and play the Resident Evil series again.. survival horror, IMO is not a harmless adventure game. Insofar as the console market being mostly older generations, that is a byproduct of the fact that kids don't have the market power to buy stuff, combined with the fact that 90% of games on systems other than GC being rated M, sports games aside. I for one, applaud the big N for having some cojones and going and making fun, innovative games, like Pikmin and Animal Crossing(BTW, I know more adults than kids that play that) which, if people would look for a game that's not just kill people break stuff.
I have no regrets, this is the only path.
My whole life has been "UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS"
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
l
..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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...is that it is just another console system. The market is simply unable to support more then two consoles effectively, especially with all the various exclusive titles and multi-platform release titles that exist today..
However, it is just a console, like the Xbox and the Playstation. They are hardly worth their time...
By the time they are worth their time, they will have evolved into full computer systems that are closed systems, similar to the early computer market when C-64's and their ilk reigned supreme. (Meaning no upgradeability.)
A few years after that... Somebody will release a "Back to Basics" console system with simplistic controls, quality graphics and easy to follow storylines that will take the market by storm...
That might take ten years or more though...
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
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.
Teenagers in the U.S. seem to belong to the category that they don't want to look like they're doing something immature. If they do anything viewed as potentially "un-cool" then they risk being "un-cool." The problem is, the stuff they turn to in order to be mature and cool are games where they run over hookers and shoot random people in the streets (i.e. GTA III).
Nintendo clearly hasn't been aiming for that crowd, and I for one am happier for it. I grew up with the NES, and since then have owned every console they've put out. They continue to make games that I get a great deal of enjoyment out of (Legend of Zelda : The Wind Waker, Super Mario Sunshine, Metroid Prime, Eternal Darkness, etc.), and they are consistantly failing to sell as well as other more mediocre games on other consoles. Worldwide, the GameCube and the Xbox are even in sales, but you would never know it by talking to a teenager. It's a shame too, because Nintendo has stated that if they ever stop making a console, they will leave the market rather than make games as a third party. If that should ever happen, the world will have lost one of the most influential and innovative developers in existence, only to be replaced with games focusing completely on graphics and/or violence.
"Chances of RHIC-induced Armageddon are exceedingly rare, but... you never know." - MIT Physicist Bob Jaffe
I think the real problem is that the biggest market for games tends to be the teen-to-early-20s, where a lot of people are more worried about appearance than reality. Hell, I had a 9 year old looking down at a good portion of my game collection because it was either 'for kids' or 'boring' (the latter being the large number of RPGs, the former being the Nintendo titles he already has and played through at least once). All he wanted to play was GTA because that's what kids think is cool.
I have a PS2 for RPGs and Tekken primarily, and bought GTA3 and Vice City because I occasionally enjoy them. I also bought GT3 for it because it's simply the best racing game I've played to date. I have an XBox primarily for Halo and have bought a handful of titles for it, both exclusives and multi-console titles, and find that the multi-console titles are usually best on it, so I'm not disappointed (and I'll probably buy KOTOR this weekend, as it seems to be the 2nd must-have title for the XBox, and given that it's both Star Wars and the 1st well-received exclusive (until it comes out on PC) RPG on the system, it obviously appeals to me). The GC is simply the system I've bought the most games for recently, and that I've played the most since I bought it. Part of that is because I bought it recently, and am playing catchup buying older titles, but another part of it seems to be that the games are just fun without having to put a lot of time into them, which means I can play a game without having to have a lot of spare time (ie all of those RPGs on the PS2 that I usually play on the weekends and often don't touch all week). Also, it helps that I haven't had a Nintendo console since the NES, and there's a good amount of nostalgia involved with Mario, Zelda, Metroid, etc. without having gone through it all with the 2 systems between then and now. Oh, and that Game Boy Player with Wario Ware and Castlevania.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
...I find Nintendo's losing market share rather perculiar. The only real difference between the two competitors, is that one releases many more adult theme games than the other. Funny, because by the looks of it, it appears that the GC has 3 good 'kiddie' game per 1 good adult game from PS2.
But what is even more funny, is that if Nintendo continues on the same track of creating fun family games, it's going to end up back on top, due to a generation of gamers settling down, getting married and having kids. I've had 5 friends in the last year talk about what console they should get for their rugrats and each one ended up with the GC, because of the family oriented games.
Mad Hatter