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GameCube Sales Quadruple, Nintendo Debuts New Slogan
Thanks to GameSpot for their report that sales of Nintendo's GameCube have quadrupled, following the price cut to $99. The piece quotes an effusive GameStop spokesman as saying: "Our sales of Nintendo GameCube have increased more than fourfold. We are currently increasing our shipment requests for the system throughout the holidays." Meanwhile, the Chicago Sun-Times reports on the new Nintendo adverts, both TV and print, with the tagline "Who Are You?" - the print ads "...show the heads of Nintendo characters superimposed on famous images, including players in the rock band Kiss, a person straddling the now-demolished Berlin Wall and no less an icon than the Mona Lisa", and the massive $100 million ad spending will also feature "a 60-second cinema commercial... shot on location in Asia... [and featuring] more than 500 extras."
To me, Nintendo is marketing the fact that they're still Nintendo after all these years. People oftentimes are unhappy in the present, and the future is a scary proposition, so they generally take solace in the past. Look at all the 80's revival shows on VH1, the new Garbage Pail Kids cards, retrogaming, etc. People love being reminded of all the cool stuff about their youth (as opposed to the crappy things) and that, to me, is what Nintendo is selling. They're saying "Hi, we're Nintendo, and we still make games with Mario, Donkey Kong, the Princess, etc. Come buy a GameCube for $99 and remember what these games are like."
Plus to me the Nintendo ads have style. Xbox ads are always MTV music videos with James Earl Jones at the end. Nintendo's ads are like those pieces of art most people don't get. Besides, everyone talks about them and remembers them - and remembers Nintendo. Pretty effective ads if you ask me.
Then again Sega's consoles always had pretty cool ads....
Schnapple
So with a game it was 149.99 now without a game it is 99.99 and a game costs 49.99. Wow, I saved a penny! Honestly it just shows that people look at the price and do not look at what you get for the price. I will admit, when I first heard about it, I was tempted to go out an buy one untill I realized that it wasn't as good of a deal as it sounds.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
There are still specific advantages in the Xbox over the Gamecube. Networked games, higher quality output (audio and video), DVD player, hard drive.
As the other poster mentioned, the DVD player is a $30 addition. Internet games is $50/year (GC network adapter is an additional cost and more games are coming that support network play, though not internet play atm). Higher quality output is another additional cost (I don't know what the A/V pack costs since I have a fairly old TV). The hard drive is it, and without any of the other additions functions as an extremely large memory card and storage for music files (which I use quite a bit on certain games).
-PainKilleR-[CE]
And the government is not propping it up either. Social security is propping up government spending
Social Security is propping up government spending, but because of that it's had to be propped up itself. Additionally, due in part to the way government likes to take money from Social Security to balance other portions of the budget, money that goes into Social Security today goes straight out to pay beneficiaries. This is why it can't support itself once the baby boomers begin to retire, or even any time when unemployment is high. The money I've been putting in for the last 5 years is spent, and the chance of it being there when it's my turn to collect is slim to none.
Nixon alone put over $900 million into Social Security to prop up the expansions he made to benefits, including a 10% increase in payout, plus a cost-of-living scale that increased based on the year you retire, rather than the year you collect (though that, by it's very nature, reduces the payout to individuals over the way most people would expect it to work).
-PainKilleR-[CE]