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GameCube's Timeline, Accomplishments Charted
Thanks to GameSpy for its article charting the progress of Nintendo's GameCube console from launch to the present day, as part of an ongoing series that has also included the Xbox. The piece starts with the bold statement: "Despite being the wrong product at the wrong time, Nintendo's durable GameCube game console has demonstrated lasting power in a market for which it was not well targeted", and ends by noting: "GameCube will certainly end this generation in second place internationally -- the virtual shutout that Xbox received in Japan settles that part of the race, and it may yet challenge Microsoft in the U.S. and European markets." What's your view of the success of the GameCube and its software titles in the current console generation?
Nintendo plays it safe for the most part. The GameCube continues a long tradition of building a good, reliable console that plays games. Plain and simple. And the games aren't bad. I enjoy mine. Metroid Prime rules, Wind Waker is highly enjoyable, and Viewtiful Joe is amazing. What's not to love? I think the pros heavily outweigh the cons. There's just too much focus from game critics on the marketshare. What does marketshare matter when your games are good, sales are good (doens't have to be the #1 seller to remain profitable), and you keep rolling out original titles (Crystal Chronicles as the most recent example). I think Nintendo is here to stay for quite some time. They definitely have not made the mistakes Sega made. They still have good brand-indentity.
Zelda: Wind Waker
Eternal Darkness
Viewtiful Joe
Mario Sunshine
Pikman (vastly underrated...)
Mario Kart: Double Dash
The biggest problem is, only two of those are third party studios...
I also have to admit, Nintendo is WAY behind on the online scene, the story is that they are still trying to figure out what the business model is, but i think it's clear these days, if you are in the console business and you are not embracing online play, you are about to go the way of the dinosuar, I say this after playing Madden 2004 online with a PS2 and being blown away by the voice chat quality and the polished feel of the whole experience.
Nintendo, I love you guys, but get on the ball!!!!
P.S. The remake of Metal Gear Solid for GC is coming out soon, better graphics, better AI, etc...
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Yeah, like all other Nintendo consoles it "sucks" so hard that people buy it, play it, and ask for more.
If it's not your cup of tea, just say that... obviously it doesn't suck if a lot of other people enjoy it.
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I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
The mass market doesn't appreciate Nintendo trying to keep the gaming market from digging itself into a rut. It's going to be the crash of the 80's all over again if someone powerful doesn't step up and try to stop it. Nintendo was there back then, Sony and Microsoft weren't, so I trust Nintendo's word on a stagnating gaming economy over the other two. GameCube-GBA connectivity is something only they can do right now (and you know Sony's going to be all over PSP-PS3 connectivity) and if it's used right it can produce innovative games (and unfortunately, it's not used well at all).
Also Nintendo, by making the GameCube use a proprietary DVD format, made it so DVD movie playback was impossible on the system. This decision also made pirating software on the system hard, and so any sales they've lost in hardware have probably been more than made up in with the sales of software because there aren't many (if any) pirated games. Plus, the GameCube was making a general profit with each console sold when it was $200, a smaller one with $150, slipped into the negatives when Nintendo started including a game with the system at $150, and is still in the negatives with $99 without a game. So, for most of the system's lifetime it's been making a profit with every console sold.
Another point is that by ignoring the internet scene, Nintendo lets Microsoft and Sony run out and get riddled by bullets while they sit back, watch, and take notes. Hopefully Nintendo will glue together the best pieces of Microsoft and Sony's online strategies into a kickass network for their next console.
One thing Nintendo needs to do is stop letting Yamauchi come back from the grave and babble about their business. It's just making fodder for the [crappy] news sites to toss out as "Nintendo's dying! Ahh!" news. He retired, stop letting him talk.
Another thing, although not truly a bad thing, is that they're Japanese centric. While this has its good sides, it alienates them from the rest of the world. But, since it is a 100+ year old company, Japanese pride is definitely going to be a major part of any decision. Hopefully (yet another hopefully...) they will strike a balance between their focus on Japan and their focus on the rest of the world and maybe rope in some more American 3rd parties. Most 3rd parties don't want to compete against Nintendo's games, so they just focus on the other consoles.
So, Nintendo has a lot of work to do in the next generation to get the people who left them to return, both 3rd parties and customers. They definitely won't pull a Sega in the next generation, though.
"I think it was a matter of form factor. I think it was the lack of third-party support. I think it was the way the market shifted toward an older audience," says video-games analyst, John Taylor, of Arcadia Investment Corp. "All of those things combined to hold GameCube back."
Or maybe it was largely because consumers had already spent three hundred dollars on one system a year ago, didn't feel that any particular title demanded they empty their wallets when it came out, and felt they already had a comparable system thanks to the gaming media's need to pidgeonhole gaming systems into "generations" when clearly the term has been pointless ever since polygon based gaming took hold of the market. At the most precursory level, the sony playstation had a 32bit processor and the n64 had a 64. Fortunately for the media these two seperate and unique beasts wind up performing about the same, plus or minus the developer's raw technical ability.
But what generation does the dreamcast belong to? The PS2 came out two years later and the visual quality between the two is often difficult to percieve.
What really matters, and nintendo has recognized, is time to market. Be the guy who defines the "generation" and make waves, either through temporary scarcity resulting in mere containers for the system being sold at 299 or by building a system backwards compatible with its predecessor. The president of Nintendo has stated they have learned this much. SNES had a huge run because it came out with a large number of cool games early on. The n64 had two, and 8 by christmas. The gamecube had 2 and 4 by christmas. It seems nintendo has realized they can't produce quality flagship software in time enough for launch. They may soon be taking the Sony approach of putting the hardware out there early, flooding the media with atmospheric trailers, releasing a demo disc attached to a shitty game and then releasing the goods a year later. For all we know, Mario 128 is exactly that.
Or maybe Nintendo will really bank heavily on the quirky game design via toys like gameboy DS or whatever.
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Everyone always seems to forget that Nintendo has to make a net profit off of it's games, because that's its only industry, where as Microsoft has probably only lost money on the Xbox, and is simply trying to use it as a tool to "get into your living room" so to speak. If you just look at net profit, I bet Nintendo has a HUGE lead on MS (even if you totally cut out their GB/GBA earnings).
Of course I'd appreciate any links to numbers that support or prove my theory wrong...
Net result: there might be one, maybe two, games on the PS2 I can find in a hurry that I can't get on the Gamecube that I'm interested in. But there's at least three games on the GC that aren't available on the PS2 that interest me: Metroid Prime, Pikmin, and Eternal Darkness. That makes the decision a no-brainer.
I go where the games are. This round, that's Nintendo. Next round, who knows? But I expect the GameCube to give me good gaming for quite some time yet.
The only titles that've received any success on the system so far (outside of Nintendo 1st and 2nd party) are the Capcom titles; specifically Resident Evil. Beyond that, the odd other title has received success (Pac Man World 2), but nothing worth writting home about. Nintendo's own titles tend to eclipse the third-party titles when third-party interest is mainly on other systems.
Namco's been doing fairly well on the Cube; besides Pac-Man, Soul Calibur 2 did very well on the Cube, and they had 2 or 3 titles that haven't been released in the US yet that did very well in Japan last year.
It may be too early to tell how well FF:CC is doing, but it'd be nice to see it do well, if only to see more SquareEnix titles on Nintendo's home consoles again. Super Monkey Ball also did well. Overall, though, Nintendo's 1st and 2nd party titles definitely overshadow the rest of the offerings on the console. That being said, most of the titles and developers that are run off because of this aren't developing high-quality titles in the first place, which leads to a higher percentage of strong titles, even if the total number of titles is lower.
If Nintendo went 3rd party ala Sega, I'm sure they'd be opening themselves up to a wider audience and raking in a lot of money. The trouble then is who would make such wonderful hardware design
They'd also have to release more software than they do now to make up for the loss of profits on hardware. As it stands, their titles are selling very well, and the primary gain from selling their games on say the PS2 would be better long-term sales. Plus, they'd make less money on each copy they sold if it were on someone else's console, because they'd have to pay the fees associated with releasing console games which they don't pay on their own hardware.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
"Adult" games. Because there are very few really violent games, it's become perceived to be a "kiddie" console. Admittedly, having GTA would have helped give the cube a new angle, but Nintendo wants to be family oriented.
Sports, racing and online. Sure, GC has all the major sports, but the only sports game people talk about is Madden on the PS2. Why? Online play. Nintendo claims that currently, they don't feel that online play is worth pursuing, but the number of Socom, Madden, and XBox Live players seem to disagree. When AI grow boring, it makes things a lot more interesting to go up against a fellow human.
RPGs. Console RPGs have a dedicated following that Nintendo barely taps into. Until recently, Zelda just scratched the surface. Final Fantasy:CC is a start and there are finally more RPGs coming in the near future.
But on the plus side, Nintendo owns, quirky, innovative and original gaming. PS2 has a huge library, which all genres are covered. And XBox has games that I'll be playing on other consoles or "exclusive" games that I can play on my PC six months to a year later. I'd rather have the Cube and be dazzled by the originality and innovation.
I love my gamecube. It's not my primary system because it only has a few games I like to play. But I do love it. That much should be understood.
That said, I think someone needs to point out what should be screamingly obvious. Nintendo makes some great games, and has a great history of making great games, and that's why people love them. But people, aside from making a handful of great games (i.e., having a number of good devs), Nintendo the company doesn't love you back.
Why do I say that? Look at the facts. Nintendo is simply the most mercenary console manufacturer out there. Everything they do is predicated on how much money they make. That's fine, because it's a business, but enough with treating them like they're godlike or untouchable. In a market with 3 consoles, the consumer is the winner when the console makers step all over themselves to deliver value. But Nintendo is always one step behind, preferring to offer a way for them to make money over a way to offer you value at every turn.
Some examples:
1) No DVD. People are right, it's not a big deal now, but at the time it was. The competitors had it, GC didn't. They did it to save money. That's it. To hear their executives describe it, though, it was as if they were doing you a favor by not providing something their competitors did. "It's a game machine", they said. As if DVD playback would have somehow sullied the purity of its gaming ability. No. It would have cost them more. That's it. And it hurt them because at the time, a lot of people didn't have DVD players. And DVDs were becoming the fastest growing media format in history. People went the other way (xbox, ps2) because for an extra $50 they could get a $200 DVD player.
2) Proprietary disc format: Their format was designed to prevent piracy and nothing else. I don't think they pretended otherwise, but still, the result is cross-platform games on the GC with compressed audio and textures.
3) No online. Sorry, they're dropping the ball on this one. Why? According to them, it's because "it's premature". Meaning they can't afford or don't want to pay for the infrastructure. Hell, they don't have to have an xbox live, just something like ps2 to at least have a PRESENCE in online. There's even a slot in the bottom of the cube waiting for a network adapter, begging them to get off their ass and make it worth purchasing. The fact is, I can understand from a business perspective if they don't think they can make money on online yet. But to scold me, the consumer, for wanting it ("console online gaming isn't ready yet") while I'm sitting there begging for it is the most classic case of Nintendo looking out for their bottom line before my interests as a consumer. It's understandable from their perspective, but I'm not going to sit and bash other consoles when they are providing me with a compelling online experience. In a 3 console market, if they don't provide what I want, I'll go elsewhere.
4) Gameboy connectivity. I don't even think I need to go into this. This is the alternative they provide to online gaming. This is the "innovation" everyone is lauding them for. Please. This is nothing more than a CHEAP, CHEAP effort to cross sell. To make me buy 2 consoles to get the most out of one game (along with a cable), or in the most egregious examples, to make me buy 2 consoles and 2 copies of the same game, is just criminal. It hearkens back to the days of being a kid and all of the shitty marketing things toy companies tried to pull back in the day. "Buy our toy! Of course, if you REALLY want to get the most out of it, buy our other toy, and our toy connector, and our toy extension...." That's fine when you're a dumb kid. But after a $150 console purchase and a $50 game purchase, I expect to have everything at hand to fully enjoy a game, thank you very much. If I want something compelling as an extension to it, how about this: the chance to play against anyone in the world online, and not have to pay for another version? How about that? Their "connectivity" play offers their bottom