Slashdot Mirror
GameCube Dropped To $99 At Online Retailer
JFMulder writes "Retail partners Amazon.com and Toys 'R Us announced today that they were dropping the Gamecube console price down to $99. Even though Nintendo is probably losing money now on the GameCube, this is the move that Nintendo may be hoping will close the little gap between Xbox and GameCube in worldwide sales, and help it gain a solid lead over Microsoft in the coming months." A Reuters story mentions further indications that an official announcement is on its way, and all on Nintendo's 114th birthday, too.
Nintendo started as a playing card company, and slowly evolved into a video game company as the technology came into being.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
It's really too bad, but Nintendo really did a bang-up job of making the system very difficult to hack.
It's too bad, because the system itself is a great little system - standard PowerPC-based processor, ATI graphics - well suited to simple programming.
However the disc format being 'backwards' - the disc spins in the normal way but is read from the outside-in instead of the inside-out like other discs - makes it difficult to even read and write a disc.
However software exists which makes a good effort at reading the discs, so it is only a matter of time before we'll see Linux or NetBSD running on the thing.
But it's really too bad that it is so difficult, because Nintendo could have sold the devices at $199 for a nice profit, including a Linux disk or something, making it a simple browse the web from the set-top solution, etc.
MORTAR COMBAT!
"Even though Nintendo is probably losing money now on the GameCube, this is the move that Nintendo may be hoping will close the little gap between Xbox and GameCube in worldwide sales, and help it gain a solid lead over Microsoft in the coming months."
Actually, Nintendo doesn't want to close the gap between XBox and Gamecube in worldwide sales... because that would make their lead smaller. I get my facts from this GameSpy article which Slashdot linked to less than a week ago.
GameCube worldwide sales: 9,550,000
XBox worldwide sales: 9,400,000
Granted this is not a "solid lead," but it is a lead, and one that Nintendo would want to extend, not close. If you're talking about Europe or America, Nintendo is in third, but in Japan, they're in a commanding second. Any comments about worldwide sales should reflect this.
-Kyle Orland
The Video Game Ombudsman
I hope Nintendo's losing money, because the retailers that sell the consoles are. Right now, if you just buy a console without any accessories or games, my store loses money. One accessory or two games will break us even, and one controller, one memory card, and three $40-50 games will make us enough of a profit to pretend it actually does something for the store.... Not a high-profit industry at store level. :) So if Nintedo's selling it to us at a price higher than we have to sell it for but they're making money, I'll be mad. :)
Nes, Snes, N64 and gamecube all launched at $200. Games have always cost about 40-50 bucks too.
the original NES was $99 if I remember correctly.
It depends on when you got it. If you were a very early NES owner and got the package with the robot (the only one available at the start), it could have been as much as $400. My parents bought the bundle with the light gun (not the orange one) and Duck Hunt/Super Mario Bros. cart. for $115, about 3-5 years after the system was released.
How much were NES games back in the day? I don't remember them being $50 each, the way GameCube games are now.
It depended on the game and when you bought it, just like it does today, except that some cartridges cost more to produce, and were therefore more expensive. Ultima:Exodus, Final Fantasy, and Dragon Warrior were each around $60 when they were first released. Most games started at $50. In the last 3 years before the SNES was released, games in the $20-35 range became much more common, though rarely for new games.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Just wondering where the hell the price difference comes from. And please don't say thing like sales tax or wages. The tax difference ain't that big and the damn things are produced in china.
VAT and import duties can be something like 15-25%. The price difference, after currency exchange, between a GBA-SP on Amazon.co.uk and amazon.com is ~50%. I'd imagine there's also a difference in cost associated with producing 220 power adapters for the rechargable battery pack (and the batteries themselves may be different), if that is needed for units sold in the EU (since Japanese and US consoles sell with 110V power adapters). There may also be associated costs with getting the device approved for the EU, which would of course be passed on to the consumers in that area.
All of that being said, the device is priced based on the combination of costs for building the device and getting it approved and shipped to the location, as well as what the market would bear. Even if the exchange rates changed drastically, Nintendo's prices wouldn't react very quickly, which could work for or against you. (in fact, if Nintendo's prices did fluctuate with the exchange rates it would probably look bad to most consumers, though it would happen if the market could manage a more direct path from the producer to the consumer, especially since even the US price is subject to exchange rates and possibly import taxes).
-PainKilleR-[CE]
I really enjoy "Super Smash Bros. Melee" and Metroid Prime. But I bought it for the GameBoy Player; all these SNES remakes and updates are exactly what I've been missing ever since "3D" took hold... (I second your recommendation for the Castlevania games, by the way).