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Eidos To Stop GameCube Development
Thanks to The Times Online for their article indicating that Eidos has announced that they will no longer develop GameCube titles. The article, based on comments made as the company announced their financial results, explains that "...there were no plans for Eidos, Europe's second largest games developer, to release any games for the struggling GameCube, which has sold about 1.8 million units in Europe compared with sales of 15 million for Sony's PS2." Eidos CEO Mike McGarvey commented: "The GameCube is a declining business... If other companies follow us [Nintendo] will have a hard battle to fight." This follows similar anti-GameCube comments by Acclaim a couple of months back.
If you notice the titles of espn sports games being produced by sega; I.E Espn football, basketball and hockey not one is coming out for the game cube. Only ps2 and xbox. Looks like the Gamecube is going the way of the N64 only 1st party games and a slow trickle of 3rd party games.
All these game developers not writing games for my GameCube is starting to make me worry that I won't have the more high quality games for my console.. Er.. Wait.. What did Eidos publish that I gave a damn about? I mean, after System Shock 2..
I bought my GameCube, because I like Nintendo's games, not so I could get more of the same from companies like Eidos.
Weapons of Mass Analysis
And how many XBox's are there in Europe?
I wouldn't be surprised if it's more than there are GameCubes, but it damn sure isn't 15 million. As anyone who reads games.slashdot regularly, Nintendo does continue to beat out XBox worldwide. Admitadly, not by much, and the majority of that is due to the Japanese market. But the market does exist for GameCube. I _just_ bought one, the first and only of ANY of the Next Gen systems I plan to buy. And I'm here in the U.S. of A. F-Zero GX, Zelda, Mario, and Samus, to name a few, continue to be a bigger draw for me. In addition, as someone who starts college in less than two weeks, I'm looking forward to having the system with the best party games out there.
The fact of the matter is, Nintendo sales WILL decline if companys continue to state the 'obvious': that "GameCube is a declining business." Bullshit. It's declining because you're helping it to do so. Nintendo isn't doing all they can to sell the system either (and from other posts and storys on Slashdot, Europe gets the short end of the stick again and again), but if a company leaves a system then that company will sell no games on that system...
Why does Nintendo continue to get the bad rap? I do fear that the GameCube will go the route of the N64, but I can only plan so far ahead. That doesn't stop me from enjoying the fun-as-hell games that are out there now, and coming out soon. Mario Sunshine, Super Monkey Ball, F-Zero GX, Rogue Leader, Pikmin, Eternal Darkness... And soon, stuff like Rogue Squadren 3 and a new Mario Kart.
The GC may end up 'losing' the console wars, but that doesn't mean owners won't have a damn good time playing what comes out for it for the next couple years. Or even longer. I still play my old-school Nintendo Entertainment System. And y'know what? I still find it damn entertaining.
-Trillian
Eidos blames Nintendo Gamecube for poor box office rates on Tomb Raider 2 by not having a larger selection of Tomb Raider titles of which Eidos claims "We would've developed more Tomb Raider games for the GC, but Lara's breast would never fit on a mini-cd, that's not even counting the animation files for real time jugglyness effect."
I have a fairly descent sized Gamecube library. And I noticed something today after reading this article. More than half of my GC library consists of Nintendo 1st party games. Granted, I'm a Nintendo fanboy, through and through. But it got me thinking. Maybe one of the reasons 3rd party developers don't fair so well on the Cube is because (as a generalization), those who buy Nintendo consoles buy Nintendo produced games. Could it be that Nintendo games are so popular for the system, that they take away sales from 3rd party developers, contributing to the problem of having 3rd parties to stop developing for the cube?
the cosmos in 20 words or less: thumbuki.com
go search amazon for soul calibur 2:
gamecube - Amazon.com Sales Rank: 10
xbox - Amazon.com Sales Rank: 49
ps2 - Amazon.com Sales Rank: 55
similar reports have been echoed by major retailers such as electronics boutique
check out their front page and you'll see the #1-selling game is the gamecube soul calibur 2, followed by the xbox soul calibur 2, followed by...f-zero gx for the gamecube.
content counts, people. nintendo makes great first-party games, and people buy them. namco made a great third-party game with a compelling bonus feature, and people have bought it.
In other news, Free Radical will no longer let Eidos publish their titles, so TimeSplitters 3 will most likely still be Cube-bound.
But really this is all about how Nintendo is slow to bring games over to Europe.
I mean, the GameCube has more million-sellers worldwide(AND in the USA as well) than the XBox. Nintendo's raking in over $1 MILLION profit a DAY. I really fail to see a problem with a losing company pulling out.
What's been the last couple failed companies?
Eidos, Acclaim, 3D0 and Interplay? Oh yeah! Tons of blockbusters there! (Pardon HOMM and Fallout) American programmers need to learn to program better, rather than chickening out. Good to know they would rather go where it's easiest and presents no challenge of sales to profit.
The lack of ESPN Sega Sports games on Gamecube has far less to do with slagging sales and more to do with the fact that Gamecube's memory cards are tiny compared to what a big sports game with a Franchise mode really needs for storage. If the Gamecube had a larger storage standard, they'd probably still have Sega Sports games. Saying that Sega won't continue supporting the Gamecube would be wrong.
sigs are dumb.
most companies wrote-off the GC from the start, hell, the only reason i have one is for the 1st party games anyways, my serious gaming is done on my PS2, X-Box or PC, i use the GC for my casual gaming.
most people that have a GC are either 12 or have another medium to play games with, Nintendo just hasn't learned how to compete in the adult gamer society we've evolved into nowadays and the Gamecubes decline is proof of this.
/. is overrun by bed-wetting elitist nerds
let it be known, for anything other than servers, a *nix OS sucks
Is the name. They should have stuck with the legacy and called it Nintendo . I have a Game Cube, and it it doesn't feel like Nintendo 64 did.
"I'm going to play Nintendo" vs. "I'm going to play Game Cube".
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003-07 -09&res=l
replace acclaim with eidos.
This is a standard gambit. People do it to Apple all the time. Your company is doing poorly, so you write off a section of your company and use it to make you seem important. This announcement has two purposes. The first is that it lets them retreat out of the GameCube market and make it seem like Nintendo's fault, not theirs-- the media reports it as "*Nintendo is dying" not "Eidos has failed to make any compelling gamecube titles". (The truth would be somewhere in between, along the lines of "The games Eidos has been releasing for Gamecube are not enough to justify the expense of training and porting to the Gamecube." But that isn't going to get reported in any case, because it isn't very sensationalistic.) The second purpose is it makes Eidos seem important. Your gut reaction on hearing this article is something like "Wow, if companies as significant as Eidos are abandoning the GC, Nintendo must be in trouble." This thought comes automatically enough you don't stop to think, wait a minute, Eidos isn't particularly one of the significant companies right now.
Saying the Gamecube is dying is rediculous. It isn't number one and isn't going to be there probably ever. But it's doing very, *very* far from poorly. There have been a number of times over the GC's life cycle that it has been fair to say "OK, nintendo is in trouble", but this is definitely not one of them. This is the one of the GOOD spots. Nintendo is making *profits* on the GC, which is certainly more than Microsoft can say. The Gamecube outsold the PS2 last week. And the Gamecube is entering one of its best bits of game library in a LONG time. After a long, long summer of drought among GC games, with nothing of note being released but MegaMan, we just got F-Zero and (yes, cross-platform) Soul Calibur 2 released last week. Coming next month is Kirby's Air Ride, TMNT, XIII, that wierd sega Billy Hatcher thing, and Viewtiful Joe. At least two of these October games look to be legitimate blockbusters. The month after that Super Mario Kart is coming out, and that's one of Nintendo's most successful titles. That's an IMPRESSIVE crop of games, and when that crop of games grows totally old, it will be about March, which is when Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and Pikmin 2 are released. I'm not going to say anything as to how this stacks up to how PS2/xbox are doing at the moment because I'm not qualified to comment on that, but one thing is certain: This is *NOT* a moment of "decline" of any sort for the Gamecube and Eidos' statement its a closing-down market is just silly.
And even if this weren't the case and the GC weren't succeeding on its own merits, the GBA looks to be making enough money and kicking enough ass that Nintendo could prop up a failing GC unit for about as long as Microsoft would bother to prop up a failing xbox unit..
Either way, Eidos leaving makes VERY little difference. I'm sure they make great stuff for other platforms, and I really liked the first two (first two) tomb raider games. But Eidos on the Gamecube? Hell, I can't even name you *ONE* game they made for the GC. Was that "timesplitters" thing theirs? Whatever it is they've been releasing for the GC, it hasn't been exceptional enough or marketed well enough to stay in my memory.. If my single data point is indicative of GC owners in general, that might have to do with why they aren't making any money on the GC.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Yeah, I used preview, but it's late and i'm tired..
:) My reference is here..
Where I said "The Gamecube outsold the PS2 last week".. that is a typo. What it should have said is "The Gamecube outsold the PS2 last week IN JAPAN". This is still a very significant event, but not quite so much so as my typo'd version implied.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Well, first off, the only Eidos published game I even own is Timesplitters 2 for my gamecube, and Allstar baseball 2002 is my only Acclaim game (from the previous Acclaim debacle). Eidos isn't the only company I couldn't care less if they leave gamecube development. So they're complaining about the crappy sales of Hitman 2 for the gamecube. Perhaps if it didn't come out 6 months after it came out for the other consoles and turned out to be a half-assed port, then it might have sold better.
There are a lot of companies out there who have been porting games to the cube, without doing anything but straight-porting them from the PS2 version. Every developer has admitted that the gamecube is capiable of much more than the PS2 (though not quite to the level of X-box), so half-assed ports that are as buggy for the gamecube as they were for the PS2, without any improvement whatsoever, aren't gonna make a lot of fans.
Hey, it's nice to know at least Soul Calibur 2 for the gamecube is outselling the PS2 5:1, granted that PS2 has a 5:1 advantage in installed system base. And with the recent news of Tales of Symphona's 200,000+ first week, and FF:CC being at over 350,000+ in about a month, maybe developers will take second looks. The best sellers for the gamecube are games that are original (read sometimes exclusive) or really have something Nintendo owners want (i.e. Link in SC2). When companies like Eidos and Acclaim pull their heads out and realize that crappy ports aren't gonna cut it, then maybe they'll start selling some games.
You know.. It's just a game console... I buy it to play games with it.. I'm not interested ion becoming a Nintendo employee or the man with the coolest console.. I just want to play great games and Metroid/Zelda/Mario *ARE* great. They're my kind of games and I like to play them. I don't know why everyone judges his (or his friends) console by the stock quotes from it's producer... My friend has a PS2 and is happy with it.. I have a Cube and I'm happy with it.. Where is the problem? When we're at my place we play with the Cube.. at his place we play PS2... What else does matter????
Now why is everyone so obessed with those 2 losers battling it out? Sure you may enjoy your gamecube or X-box but you are like the person who still says C64 all the way.
I still don't understand one thing. Why are so few games cross-platform. Isn't it so that the greatest cost in making a game is the creation of the world/art not the coding of the engine itself? If this is so porting the engine should be trivial compared to the total development cost. For the real world see how many cars are not made into rightside drive versions for countries like england. Or different voltages. Or different measurement systems.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"Thanks to The Times Online for their article indicating that Eidos have announced that they will no longer develop GameCube titles.
"Eidos" is singular, not plural. It is not "Eido's". The sentence should say "Eidos has".
Eidos produce nothing but crap in-house. Sure they have some worth-while third parties who publish through them (Free Radical being the good people who worked at Rare and produced GoldenEye), but all the same, for the most part, the GameCube and all it's happy users will be much better off without the crap mongoring crap monkeys that are Eidos pushing their crap onto us.
Sorry Eidos, but Tomb Raider isn't big, or good anymore, so no one cares what you think.
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?
You could easily replace "Acclaim" with "Eidos" and this strip would still make perfect sense now.
As far as my quick research showed, Eidos has released 3 games for the Cube. None of which I own. One of which Eidos won't be publishing the sequel for (Timesplitters 2). So why should I care?
I cannot imagine that anyone has ever gone buy a console, picked up and considered the GC, but then said "Ooh, but there aren't a lot of Acclaim and Eidos titles for it", and then went and bought a PS2.
People buy consoles because of the games that already exist for it. They want Halo or KOTOR, so they buy an XBox. They want GTA:VC or Final Fantasy, so they buy a PS2. They want Zelda or Metroid, so they buy a GC.
The thing is that the XBox and the PS2 are fighting for very similar customers there - especially now that the GTA games are coming out for the XBox. People who like XBox games are also likely to like PS2 games.
The GC, on the other hand, is marketing to such a different market segment that it's tough to even call it a competitor. The people who like Zelda and Metroid are substantially different from the GTA fans. That's not to say that you can't like both - just that there's a huge chunk of potential Zelda buyers who will never, ever pick up GTA. Or Final Fantasy X. Or Halo.
The fact of the matter is that Eidos and Acclaim don't make games like Zelda and Metroid. They make games like GTA and Halo. So the Gamecube probably isn't the right console for them.
And that's fine. Because, ultimately, Nintendo doesn't care if Acclaim is profitable. Nintendo cares if Nintendo is profitable. And if they can maintain a model of making a small profit on every console they sell (Which they can), and of getting the outrageous sell-through rate they do on their A-List games (Which, so long as their A-list games continue to be of the quality of Zelda and Metroid), while also generating respectable numbers on their B-List titles (Eternal Darkness, Pikmin), then there is nothing, financially, for them to worry about.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
What's next ? FOX deciding that SpeedVision (RIP) should carry more NASCAR because the rally/motorcycle racing market is much less than the oval-racing crowd ? Or Clear Channel not airing independent music because let's face it, Britney is simply more successful ? Or companies deciding to ignore other OSs because Windows sells more than all of them combined ? Oh wait...
Monoculture, here we come!
Acclaim and Eidos leaving the GameCube market opens the door for other publishers to increase their sales on that platform.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Once again, the rabid nintendoites need a good hosing down. I could see where the replies here were going to end up the instant I saw the article.
Face it, people, you may like your system but that doesn't mean that it's either a) The best system or b) The system most likely to make money. Game developers are in it for money and game development isn't cheap anymore. So when a game company struggles, good or bad, they're going to try to focus on the markets they find most profitable. Right now, Eidos has joined Acclaim and Sega Sports in determining that GC development can be removed from their core business, helping their bottom line. THAT'S IT. THAT'S ALL THAT HAPPENED. This isn't an indictment of everything you find moral; it's a business decision.
While I agree that Eidos hasn't published much inhouse of worth (all of the Tomb Raider titles sucked, in my opinion), they do have other properties that they publish that have been both successful and good. They used to publish the Unreal games (though I think that's Infogrames/Atari now), and they still (last I heard) publish the Deus Ex games. Deus Ex cannot be slammed by anyone with any sense. Overall, I find Eidos to be a mediocre publisher with a few really good games.
I have a GC myself that I use to play the Nintendo games. I'm probably not alone in focusing mainly on 1st party games for that system. But if I'm a 3rd party publisher and I see that trend, plus I see Nintendo charging outrageous licensing fees, then I'm less likely to want to develop on that platform. If I can make money by developing to xbox and ps2, then I see no reason to have to deal with porting to yet another system, with all of the development costs associated with it.
Overall, despite what people think about Eidos, there's a trend developing. Eidos, Acclaim, Sega Sports (which produces EXCELLENT games), and others have pulled out of GC development. I don't think it spells the end of the GC, but I wouldn't be making any bets on it coming in second place in this round. Frankly, I think Nintendo makes a lot of arrogant decisions that end up biting them in the ass, and we're kind of seeing the results of that. Their draconian licensing arrangements, their insistence on developing on proprietary media (which was a real problem in the last generation), their insistence that GC/GBA linkage is somehow revolutionary and anything more than a cheap attempt to get you to buy more Nintendo games, their insistence that the GC is somehow BETTER because it doesn't have a DVD player in a console generation that coincides with DVDs becoming the most successfuly media ever launched; all of this stuff adds up. I think Nintendo needs a reality check. They make great games, some of the best out there. But they need to get a little humble and realize that they are no longer the center of the gaming universe. personally, I wish them luck because I want to see them do well. But, we'll see what happens.
My only reaction to this is to think: "Oh no!!! If this keeps up, I won't be able to buy any shitty games at all for my GameCube!! Oh woe is me".
Seriously, outside of Timesplitters 2, were there any games released by Eidos for the Cube that either weren't complete crap, weren't ports released far later than they were on other platforms, or both? And given that, is it Nintendo's fault that the games didn't sell, or Eidos' fault for having a shitty business plan?
The loss of any developer is keenly felt by the platform makers. But in contrast the N64 has a profit margin per console sold compared to the PS2 and Xbox. The push by console makers to compete with PC platforms has only led them to make PC's in the long run. IMO it's better to shell out the cash for the PC and if you want formfactor there are many things out today that are comparable in size to a console system. Keep in mind the PS3 and Xbox2 may actually fail if they cannot generate sales of games to make up withe the negative profit margins those systems will generate. If they charge 399 per system then depending on the system spec's they could lose upwards to 200 dollars per unit sold not to mention the discounts they give to markets where the average person could not afford the 399 pricetag.
I think the real war for profitability is to stop the pirating of games that runs rampant in many Asian countries. I remember in Korea you could buy PS1 games for 4 dollars a peice which I thought was a shame since most people there can afford the games. They also have major problems with Software and Music priacy.
Now maybe they'll stop making games for every other system. One can dream, right?
Now, if something bad happened to, say, Blizzard I might worry.