Harrison On Nintendo's Shortcomings, Hopes

Thanks to EGM for their interview with Nintendo vice-president George Harrison, discussing the current state of the GameCube, as well as plans for the future. Harrison is surprisingly honest, commenting: "I think we've had individual successes with things like Zelda: The Wind Waker and Smash Bros. and others. If there's a shortcoming for us on GameCube, it's not delivering enough consistent breadth and variety of software. That really is the key." He also explains the exact reasoning behind the GameCube's recent price drop: "We see people buying it for $99 as a second system; potentially someone who has owned a PlayStation 2 for three years already and know that they have another two or so years to wait [for the next console hardware generation]."

Comments

Like everything else

[xQuarkDS9x]

The XBOX and PS2 consoles are flooded full of crappy, boring titles with

A) Poor gameplay
B) Poor Graphics
C) Both

Sure, the Xbox and PS2 have some good titles (Halo on Xbox and I guess GTA series on PS2) but otherwise they are few and far between.

Whereas in the last year and a half alone Nintendo has dome some damn fine updates to classic games with sequels. Let's see, Metroid Prime, Zelda: Wind Waker, new Mario Kart next month, Mario Sunshine, F-Zero GX, Super Smash Bros Melee, Kirby Air Ride, and more. Some of those games will even have more sequels next year as well.

Heck, now you can even play Kirby and hopefully Mario later next month over the internet with the Warp Pipe Project, using a BBA (Broadband Adapter) a Windows or Linux box and your set.

FPS keeps consoles down

[Phillip J Fry]

The biggest problem I see with Console gaiming is the difficulty with FPS control. That's First Person Shooter not Frames per Second. I bought the Gamecube when Metroid Prime came out and I was skeptical of the whole FPS aspect of the game. But I found it to be done very well. They used auto aiming to aid in the controls and didn't sacrifice any difficulty. While this works for a single player game, I don't see how it could be incorporated successfully into a multiplayer realm. This seems to be the pressing issue for console systems. Consoles are going to contuinue to support online gameplay, and the most successful system will be the one that finds a way to solve the FPS control issue. Because I for one find a keyboard and mouse much easier to use than a controller in a FPS environment.