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Nintendo Resumes Production Of GameCube
Thanks to Gamesindustry.biz for their article revealing that GameCube consoles are rolling off the production lines in Japan once again, as revitalized demand for the system "finally outstrips the backlog of units which had built up at Nintendo's warehouses", following the suspension of GameCube manufacturing earlier this year. The article points out that "Recent price-drops combined with the roll-out of key software titles [including the Zelda bundle] for the machine in all three major markets have given the Cube new life in the run up to Christmas", as Nintendo VP George Harrison "...told the Wall Street Journal that he expects to sell two million Cubes in the US market this Christmas."
I'm not surprised. For $100 I'd consider buying one just for the hell of it. There's nothing that I really want on it (until Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles comes out), but for that price, if I spend a few hours playing it EVER, then I've gotten my moneys worth.
For a while there was talk of a Zelda GameCube bundle, with all of the Zelda games, plus the new-er iteration. Really looking forward to it - first reason to actually buy a GameCube. Perhaps this is the first step in seeing that roll out? Probably a Christmas hold off.
Informatus Technologicus
I'm here, but I never said they were doomed to fail. Just that they were losing big in the US and still are. They are basing that 2 million number on the fact that sales skyrockted for the one week after the price dropped. Well duh. But will they sustain it through the holiday season to hit 2 million consoles in the US from now until 1/1/04? Even given 4 weeks to pull it off they would have to sell 250k consoles per week. Clearly not. At best its wishful thinking, at worst they are deceiving investors. But then they aren't really an American company so they can lie all they want over here.
Hey, you can keep Mario Kart, I bought it once before, I'm still not going to buy a console just to play the same games again.
What with the recent ruling by the Library of Congress regarding copying obsolete video games, the Gamecube was, technically an obsolete system. The actual wording of the law was that a system shall be considered obsolete if it is no longer manufactured OR is no longer reasonably available on the commercial market. Since only one of those conditions needs to be true, Nintendo may have resumed production just to keep copying of GameCube games illegal. Makes me wonder if they'll start making NES, SNES, and Virtual Boy systems again, but they'd also have to make them "reasonably available on the commercial market" (pre-owned doesn't count as "commercial").
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
Still are?
Did you miss the news that they doubled their market share already?
the xbox is now in third place.
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Don't really think that "stop the production of the gamecube" "dropping the price" "restart the production" are three unrelated decision... maybe I'm just xfiling (but well the thruth is out ther, no?), but to me it sounds like a multi step marketing strategy:
1) Big N claims that GC struggle in misery, developper ain't to do any further game, etc.
2) This generation of consoles is over (or so says Nintendo), everybody start to speak about GC2, Xbox2, PS3, Big N stops the production of the GC.
3) Price are dropped so much that everybody who possibly would rather play Zelda or Mario buy the GC (hey man it's just 99 bucks)
4) Nintendo starts the stats festival: "we're up of 3% while the others are down of 15%", GC+GBA dominate the console market with a combined share of more than 50%, etc
5) Eventually Nintendo restarts the production of the GC, so the next Xmas season will start with a diffuse feeling that Nintendo is doing very well and GC is about to win the console's war.
According to this story from IGN, Nintento sales have quadrupled and market share has doubled. From the article:
GameCube now runs a 'strong second' to PlayStation 2 in monthly sales, at least based on October sell-through data." It doubled its previous 19 percent [marketshare] piece of the pie to 37 percent. Combined with sales of Game Boy Advance SP -- it accounts for 'half of all system sales in 2003.
I'll agree with you that the installed base is by far the more important factor, although i wouldn't say that market share is completly irrelevant.
However it's a bit biased of you to be singling out Nintendo for this behavior. Every time something similar happens to Sony or Microsoft they crow about it just as loudly. How long has Microsoft been claiming that they're beating Nintendo in the console wars, and how often do they remember to mention that thwy're talking about America, and they're third place world wide in installed user base? When Sony was talking about how much better than the Dreamcast the PS2 was going to be, did they ever mention that it was going to have almost no games at launch and comparable graphics? They're _all_ guilty of that kind of crap, the only thing that changes is which positive looking number they're touting this week.
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