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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.
Nintendo has always had Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. I never had a SNES, but I've played all the way through every NES, N64 and GC version of each of the three series, and ALWAYS look forward to the next ones. Why? It's all about the characters. Which is also why I love Super Smash Bros. Melee so much, despite the fact that I never really liked any other combat-type game (Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, etc.).
I haven't even bothered looking at an Xbox, but we've got a PS2, of which my gf is a huge fan, mostly for the Final Fantasy series. And yeah, the graphics are nice, but the character movement & game play just doesn't seem as fluid - especially the camera controls. Started playing Ratchet & Clank a while ago, and after being used to Mario & Zelda 64 camera controls, I find the 'set camera behind you' interface to be horribly disorienting. Not to mention the damn controller- every time it says to push square, circle, triangle, or X, I have to look down. I've never had a problem finding A/B/X/Y, and w/ color-coded screen icons representing the buttons, they're even easier to find. Better control, better characters, better games.
"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...
I only have about ten games, myself, and am also poor... ;) When I look around, I see people owning way more games for the other two players than for their GameCubes.
That means something. It's actually pretty interesting, as I see it. Now, most of those relatively few games everybody has are the same--I know about thirty GameCube owners and every single one has SSB:M. Anyway, it means that the games are so damn good you only need a few.
If this were the case for Sony or Microsoft, it would really suck for them. If overall better games means overall less sales, it also means less profit. Which is an interesting paradox, isn't it? But Nintendo's first-party focus makes this work! The games that they make, and ultimately take ALL the profit for, are the ones that sell like mad. I'm sure they get much more money from five first-party sales than ten third-party.
Ultimately they can let their customers spend less, yet get to keep more themselves.
Is there something wrong with this analysis? It really looks almost too good to be true.
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.
Why do I love my GameCube?
;)
Well, it has the exclusive Mario Kart on it, which I love. It has the exclusive Animal Crossing on it, which made me late for work on many an occasion and ate well over 40 hours of time each from my wife's life and from mine. It also has the only non-Nintendo-specific games I wanted, which are The Simpsons: Hit 'n Run and all of the Tony Hawk series (my wife, inexplicably, LOVES the Tony Hawk series and kicks my ass on a regular basis.)
So, it plays exclusive games I love, it plays the multi-console games I want, the controller fits my hand well (including the wavebird wireless), it tucks unobtrusively into a corner of my entertainment center, and it was c-h-e-a-p.
Finally, when my wife gives birth to our first child, I know I can throw the GameCube in the closet and pull it out a few years later and introduce them to Pikmin, Animal Crossing, and other non-violent games.
It is, in short, a great family-oriented middle of the road box with just enough hardcore game titles to keep this mid-30-year-old satisfied. Kind of the Atari 2600 of current consoles.
Plus it's blue. I like blue.
"Are you being weird, or sarcastic?" said Emma. I said I didn't know because I get the two feelings mixed up.
This guy's nuts. Grape Nuts. He could have titled the article, "Many flawed reasons why I don't like the GameCube."
....to Steven L. Kent, I'm sure.
"Despite being the wrong product at the wrong time,"
Ohhhh-kay. Instant glove slap. That's GameSpy's casual sensationalism for you.
"....the market shifted toward older audiences with less toy-like tastes...."
Yes. Let's talk about "the market." The same "market" that is composed largely of children, PARENTS, and gamers who have been playing since they themselves were chilren. The same "market" that keeps Pokemon at or near the top of the sales charts in any given region for multiple-month stretches each time. The same "market" that has caused the GameBoy platform (of all things) to be the longest running and most popular purely gaming platform ever.
Zip forward temporarily to 2002:
"June 23rd: Eternal Darkness ships to very disappointing sales. Only 300,000 copies are sold.
August 25th: Super Mario Sunshine ships and becomes the number 10 best-selling game of the year with over 1.5 million copies sold."
Would Mr. Kent like to explain how such a game with a "kiddy" image, not to mention one that many (not myself) consider a sub-standard Mario game, outsold such a high-quality game obviously targeted at adults by so large a margin? This only proves either that adults can enjoy colorful games, nullifying the "games for everyone = kiddy" stereotype, or that pandering to adults is not a pre-requisite to success. Win-win for Nintendo.
"When, in 2001, Nintendo unveiled the indigo box with the big black handle, Nintendo executives looked a bit like a well-meaning uncle presenting a Barbie doll to his 15-year-old niece."
More like a boombox that can play whatever she chooses.
"GameCube seemed doomed from the start."
"PlayStation 2, which had backwards compatibility with original PlayStation games and a huge list of exclusive titles, was viewed as the system with the best library and the most chic."
False. For over a year after its North American launch (the period of which Mr. Kent speaks), the PS2's library was lackluster and meager.
"....even after lowering the price of its system hardware to $99 and outselling Microsoft in 2003, GameCube did not catch up to Xbox."
Spin. Here Steven turns a positive point about a current ongoing trend into a negative point about past performance.
"....Yamauchi's comment that, "Nintendo is planning to make the Game Boy and its Advance successor the company's top priority." seemed cavalier. In retrospect, it was merely prophetic."
This seemed cavalier to whom? Those who chose not to believe him? Those who chose to ignore the fact that GameBoy sales had helped subsidize Nintendo 64 production and sales throughout its lifetime? The then-head of the company makes statements that Steven fails to understand completely almost six years later (which end up being true), and this only "merely" seems prophetic to him? Looks to me like Yamauchi really IS crazy like a fox, while Mr. Kent is just crazy.
"PlayStation 2 goes on sale in North America and stores cannot keep up with demand until March, 2001."
He (hopefully) means that SONY couldn't keep up with demand. Retailers had nothing to do with it. It was a production problem, plain and simple. Sony was either (A) deceptive enough create an artificial scarcity to increase demand, or (B) incompetent enough not to be able to gauge the market and/or keep up with market demand. Considering the low build quality of first-generation N. American PS2s, either scenario is credible.
"Many Christmas shoppers who came in looking for an Xbox or a GameCube likely settled with PlayStation 2, giving PlayStation 2 a huge install base lead at the end of the holidays."
And vice versa. This is a non-point that Mr. Kent tries to turn into a negative against the GameCube. Why?
"By the end of 2003, Nintendo's decision to
I hate the griping that the console looks "toylike". I have all 3 consoles, (admittedly GC first, because of the games) and the GC is the only one that I like having out in the open. The Xbox is this hulking monstrosity with giant 80s-era fins, and the PS2 is just dull, as squared off as is PS2 logo...only its vertical stand woud make it interesting, and I heard that's not great for the alignment, so I don't do that.
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