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Nintendo - Stodgy, Not-So-Super Mario?
Thanks to the Washington Post for their article discussing Nintendo's current position in the console wars. Although many of the usual points are discussed (despite Sony and Microsoft's efforts at innovation in online gaming and elsewhere, Nintendo has "...stuck to a philosophy that people who buy and play video games enjoy the familiar and care little for such gimmickry"), the piece also points to possible failure in Nintendo's current tactics ("The company proclaimed that the Game Boy Advance would be a 'Trojan horse' for the GameCube - but that Trojan horse never opened because very few game designers have figured out cool ways to take advantage of that connectivity.") The article ends with an analyst's concern that "...the game console market might be starting to move beyond what Nintendo can deliver."
You should do a little more research. . . there are a great number of truly amazing games available for GameCube. If you think the Resident Evil series is good, check out Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. It's what Resident Evil 0 should have been. Except that none of the Resident Evil games have actually been as good as Eternal Darkness.
Without knowing what kinds of games you like, it's hard to offer more specific suggestions, but you might be surprised at how many great GameCube games there are. Viewtiful Joe is one of the coolest things I've played in years, Ikaruga is still one of my favorites, although I've had it for almost a year now. Pac Man Vs. looks like an absolute blast for multiplayer (although the Mario Party games, and Super Smash Brothers currently rule that area). And let's not forget Final Fantasy: Chrystal Chronicles, which I'm hoping will live up to the hype, since FF: X2 has been rather disappointing.
And, you've also got available to you pretty much everything from EA, and most major cross-platform games, like Prince of Persia, Sphinx, etc.
[Information Disclsure: I currently own a PS2, GameCube, X-Box, Dreamcast, and PC. They all get played to some extent, but of the current consoles, the GameCube gets played the most, followed closely by PS2, and lastly (by a good bit) the X-Box.]
Topher
How can a company be dead when their leading console ( Gameboy advance / advance sp ) has the highest user base in Japan.
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http://www.ningc.com/news.php?article=3953.
And just hit the 10 million mark in europe.
http://www.bdgamer.net/index.php/item/index.php/c
And it's more expensive over here at the current exchange rate thats well over a billion dollar gross in europe alone.
The combined sales of gamecube and gameboy advance are dominating the market at 51% of all consoles sold last month and this figure ISN'T from Nintendo it's from the retailers !!!
http://www.gamerseurope.com/news/1095
Perhaps the writer and the sony/microsnot toadie analysts should have done some research before proclaiming the big N dead.
Since Zelda is presumably the largest selling point of the GameCube, you can make assumptions on whether or not poor sales are a sign for the future. Early sales of games are decent measures for sales later on...if they are weaker than you expected at first, the game will not sell as much as you would've wished (there are exceptions, but they are few and far between).
Which is funny, because the N64 had just a tiny fragment of the GameCube's userbase. Eensy weensy. This was mainly because there were far fewer consoles of any type sold back then. Of course, when there are only 50 games for a system, any particular game will have a much higher sell-through rate on that system.
No it didn't. The N64 sold 40 million systems in its lifetime, whereas the GameCube has sold 10-12 million.
The N64 was not a bad console. It just died a long, slow death. The last year and a half to two years of the N64's lifetime weren't very good, but for the first 3 years the N64 sold about evenly with the Playstation.
Wow, let's all join on the Nintendo-bashing bandwagon! Completely ignoring actual statistics!
Nintendo's stock price is back above 10,000 Yen for the first time in two months since the profit-loss announcement. Sales have been through the roof since the price-cut. Heck the article bases Nintendo's "failure" off of two month old console sales and sales of one game.
"The GameCube is teetering on the edge of whether they should stay in this business or not,"
Congratulations on doing research. Nintendo has said time and again, when they leave the console-making business, they leave the games business.
Game magazine editor Davison said the smartest thing for Nintendo to do would be to "circle the wagons" on the handheld market and give up the console market, a thought other analysts share.
WHY? The GameCube has more million sellers (Including titles rated M) than the Xbox, in the states AND abroad. Heck, Super Smash Bros. Melee has outsold Halo, but would this article have you believe that?
Mario Kart Double Dash was the top seller in November, even though it was only out for 1/2 of the month. It sold 650,000 consoles compared to 750,000 PS2s and 400,000 Xboxen.
What more does the WashingtonPost expect out of Nintendo? They can only stage a comeback so fast. Of course, the Post fails to mention Sony's profit loss or MS's trickling Xbox Live numbers.
Whoever wrote this article clearly just wants to sound hip in putting down a company that is clearly in no position to leave. Don't base a company's success on their business in your area. Heck, would you believe Sony's profits fell 98% during one quarter this year? Just remember, it takes a lot less sales of First-party games(GCN) to make a profit than licensing out for Third-party games and console sales(PS2) and last I checked, as long as you are making money doing it, why stop? And, no, the profit loss last quarter was not due to sales of anything whatsoever. Nintendo's huge cash stockpile is overseas partially and when the value of the Yen increases by only a few cents, the value in the banks drops dramatically. If you've been following currency amounts, you'll know it's wacky. Heck, Canada's trading at nearly $1.30/76c for the first time in a long while.
"I hate to say the N64 was a failure, but it came up way short of expectations AND it ended up losing the console war with the Playstation. "
Failure? Nintendo sold more than 30 million N64s. That ain't no failure.
"Derp de derp."
Wrong. They sued for uses of their trademarked logos, screenshots they released for news/review media (which is NOT the same as unofficial strategy guides), and in a very particular case that got Slashdotted (where Daily Radar's parent company, Imagine Media, was sued), the company used the Pokemon trading cards for their pics of the Pokemon, as well as using the actual trademarked Pokemon logo on the unnoficial book.
Funny thing is, when the Daily Radar thing happened, most /. people didn't read what was up, and instantly rallied behind the 'little guy' of Daily Radar (which Nintendo denied screenshots and other products because of their parent comapny's use of Pokemon stuff), and proclaimed Nintendo as the new Satan.
Unofficial stategy guides can be fine... but they need to make their own artwork, not use trademarked logos, etc. In the cases of suing unofficial strategy guide publishers, it is normally because they violate copyright/trademark laws, normally while the game company suing has their own official guide out, or licenses the properties to a publisher. Unofficial guides that rip off the properties steal sales from those actually licensed, and, as such, should be sued out of existance. If they use no screenshots, official artwork, trademarked logos, etc (IE make their own art (costs money), don't have released screenshots (have to make themselves), and use normal letters for trademarked names (people won't notice them)). then fine, but many of the 'unnoficial' guides did use such things without permission, and deserved to be sued.
While Nintendo claims that the proprietary GC disc size is to prevent piracy, the more likely reason (since piracy is as rampant now as it is for the other two systems)
Really? While I've heard that ISOs are found here and there, there's no way to replicate the media, or force a full sized burned DVD into a GC. Piracy is all about ease of use. To pirate GC games is a wee bit harder than the other two, and as such is nowhere near as widespread as PS2 and Xbox piracy.
is that Nintendo owns the manufacturing factory for the discs
Um, and Sony outsources for the PS2 (Sony is one of the largest DVD disk manufacturers in the world)? Or Microsoft for the Xbox's prorpietary DVD disks? How is this different for Nintendo, then? That's like saying it's wrong for Warner Bros. to have a DVD making factory or a CD music disk making factory for their respective divisions.
Game publishers don't press their own disks for any console. The consiole manufacturers do. This goes for the Xbox and PS2 as well. Sony and Microsoft own the factories that press their disks; yet its bad that Nintendo does? Grow a brain.