UK Retailers Dumping Gamecube?

GameCube Europe is carrying a story stating that major United Kingdom retailers are dropping the Gamecube from their stock. From the article: Argos [has] reduced the GameCube from the RRP of £79.99 to only £39.99 and have also reduced the cost of games and accessories by a drastic amount.

Comments

Even so,

[Bagels]

I have a sneaking suspicion that they'll start carrying them again when this year's blockbusters ("mature" Zelda, the Pokemon RPG) come out for it. Otherwise, their competitors will stand to gain quite a bit.

Now's the time.

[tsalem]

If you live in the UK, I think now would be the best time to get a Gamecube, if you haven't already. At the current price at Argos, it's selling for cheaper than it is in the US (correct my if I'm wrong, I'm aware of the difference between the pound and the dollar).

There are a good deal of games worth getting for the system that you can find for cheap noawadays. Matroid, the Mario/Luigi games, Zelda Wind Waker, Star Wars, Smash Brothers Melee, amongst others. As an earlier poster stated, they might raise the prices again, so get 'em while they're cheap.

it not selling so get rid of it....

[johnjones]

simple really if you had a lot of stock and the sales where low/nonexistant what would you do ?

nintendo cube sales are not good in the highstreet

frankly all the kids I know have playstation / playstation 2 or xbox

what is going to be intresting is the price of a GameBoy after PSP is released

regards

john jones

Re:I still find it amusing...

[clu76]

MS didn't buy anything, their console is succesful with excellent first-party games and third-party support, something the Gamecube lacks.

I own an Xbox. And I still recognize that Microsoft bought their way into the market. They took huge losses selling their product below cost and on an extremely aggressive advertising campaign. They bought Bungie which made Halo and Halo 2, their best sellers. And Nintendo is still king of first-party games, being the second largest publisher of games in 2003.

Does this really come as a suprise to anyone?

[Dragoon412]

First off, a bit of a disclaimer: I own all 3 current consoles, and I enjoy them all. ...but let's be honest. I own, oh, say 20 games for my PS2. Mostly RPGs, plus Armored Core and a handful of others.

For the Xbox, I own about 15 games. Obviously, Halo, Halo 2... plus MechAssault 2, Breakdown, Burnout 3, Soul Calibur, Rainbow 6, Splinter Cell 2... Anything cross-platform, I get on the Xbox.

For the Gamecube? I have 2 games. Smash Bros and Mario Kart. I had Metroid Prime and Echoes - both were great the first time through for all of a few hours. Wind Waker? Lame concept - Link shouldn't be a fat little kid, but all and all a pretty decent game. Mario Sunshine? It may as well have been called random_generic_platformer01.

That's the problem with Nintendo: Nintendo is the problem with Nintendo.

The Gamecube has awesome hardware. It's without a doubt the coolest console from a hardware perspective. It has damned near Xbox-level performance in a much smaller, sleeker package. The controller? The Wavebird is the best controller ever made (with the Xbox controller S coming in second). From a hardware perspective, it makes the PS2 (and those godawful Dual Shock controllers) seem downright amateurish, and the Xbox seem like it was designed by a neaderthal.

But the PS2 has fantastic 3rd party support, with fairly solid first party support.

Xbox has lacking 3rd party support, but is great for cross-platform games because of its power, and Xbox Live makes all the difference in the world.

Nintendo? They have some of the most solid first-party support ever, but their first party games either...

A) have absolute SHIT for replayability; many of Nintendo's first-party games are definitely worth a rental, but not worth buying. Or...

B) Require that you have multiple friends over to really get the most out of (a design tendancy that obviously favors the younger Hey, come over to my place after school crowd).

Meanwhile, Nintendo's 3rd-party support is virtually non-existant. Their artistic style is almost hopelessly skewed towards Disney animation (and while there's nothing necessarily wrong with that, it's sort of limiting the scope of games that can be made - I mean, just think: if Pirates of the Carribean replaced Depp and co. with a bunch of animated characters styled after the 7 dwarves, would it really have the same flavor?)

So what this console race winds up looking like is Sony's kicking everyones' asses because of their fantastic 3rd party support, Microsoft's hanging in there because of a few awesome games and Xbox Live, and Nintendo's taking the most awesome console to date, and trying to sell it by whoring their own characters out more than a $5 Vegas hooker. Sure, sure, they're "innovative" but have you ever noticed how every time you want to take advantage of one of Nintendo's "innovations" you wind up having to buy a new peripheral?

The best thing Nintendo could do, in my eyes, anyways, is stick to making hardware (because they do a damned fine job of that), license their stable of franchises out to 3rd parties (I mean, just look what Retro managed with Metroid Prime - those fucktards at Nintendo let their most adult-oriented franchise just rot for years and years, cranking out the odd Super Metroid clone on the GBA, and then Retro takes it off their hands and makes one of the best consoles games ever), and try to build a functional platform behind their console; something like Xbox Live.

In the mean time, yeah, the Gamecube may sell as well as the Xbox, but I'd hazard a guess that your average Xbox owner is buying a lot more games than your average Gamecube owner. Maybe that is why stores are dropping it.

Re:Does this really come as a suprise to anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your experiences are definitely not invalid, but they simply don't represent what I see regularly at my shop.

What I see are guys who have PS2s for the exclusives only. Most (mind you, this is a domestic & import game shop with not-so-low prices, so the people that shop there obviously dedicate some conscious time to "being gamers" beyond your typical Wal-Mart game shopper) also have at least one other current console, and almost all also have GBAs. Most often, the two consoles that my two-console shoppers own are PS2 and GameCube, while the PS2/Xbox combo isn't as prevalent. In fact, it's less than the number of GameCube/Xbox combo owners I've noticed, but those guys tend to be weird anti-Sony elitists. :^)

PS2 games sell the most, obviously, just because of the number of PS2s out there, but multi-platform games show a surprising trend. For certain games that have a Japanese origin/influence, the GameCube versions will often sell better. I don't ask why, but I think people just like buying games for their GameCubes, based on the way they talk. Like, we've sold way more copies of Viewtiful Joe 1 & 2, Mega Man Anniversary, and Mega Man X Command Mission for GameCube than for PS2. A _lot_ more. I think some gamers have a weird concept of titles that "belong" on such and such console. For domestic releases of Western games, the Xbox version sometimes ties (but doesn't often surpass) the sales of the PS2 versions of those games. Again, I don't ask why, since it seems like the Xbox is _the_ "Western" console. Maybe such gamers just tend to own PS2s more than Xboxes, for whatever reason. And yes, early imports of Nintendo titles always sell well for Cube, GBA, and DS, prior to U.S. launch. We always stock up.

As for console sales, we sell a lot of modded/unmodded PS2s, modded/unmodded Xboxes, and unswitched GameCubes. Nobody ever buys our switchable GameCubes, but our supplies of Freeloaders and Action Replays have a very high tie-in with our GameCubes, even more when we used to import and sell spice and special-edition GameCubes from Japan. If we count modded systems, we sell more Xboxes than GameCubes (disclaimer: we never pre-install games or emulators, even when offered money to do it!), but if we count unmodded systems, we sell quite a few more unswitched GameCubes than unmodded Xboxes every week, with almost no exceptions. We still sell more unmodded PS2s though. And we always get requests about HDLoader/HDAdvance, though we've never stocked them. I'll let you guys figure out why unmodded GameCubes sell so well despite the weird pirate-ability of the other two consoles, especially at a store that does mods/switches and deals in (admittedly expensive) import games.

So no, as a U.S. retailer, WE would never drop GameCube. Not when it's become a huge cornerstone of what we offer in the current generation. And while your analysis of Nintendo's hardware ingenuity is spot-on (we like it), I disagree that Nintendo's first-party software is anything other than THE biggest reason to own a GameCube. Because that's exactly the biggest reason that Nintendo systems leave our doors so frequently, with third party games following in good tow afterwards. Nintendo's first-party popularity drives system sales, creating a market that is receptive to third-party offerings, therefore profitable for all around. It's not Nintendo competing with third parties for game sales, it's making sure that people own the platform so third parties can leverage that penetration. So when a Nintendo title seems "out there," just remember that the third-parties can provide the same-old same-old, if that's what you want. But the people who might buy THOSE games are attracted by the Nintendo quirks.

Re:A pity

[Freexe]

In Japan the sales figues were (official Media Create figures):

XBOX - 37,083 GameCube - 696,839 PlayStation 2 - 2,691,666

But that doesn't include include DS and Gameboy figures which add up to almost 4 million units in Japan alone. Nintendo doesnt spend as much as Sony and Mircosoft so they dont need to make as much. I'm sure they still turn a healthy profit.

They also have 7/10 of the best selling games of the year.

Re:I still find it amusing...

[Jane_the_Great]

The net loss on the console sales is greater than the net gain on the software sales according to the most recent financial report from MS.

Re:I can't blame them...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure MGS2 used any of the analog functionality, but I know MGS3 uses it quite extensively. For example if you are holding an enemy in a choke hold, press O lightly will just choke him. Press O down harder to cut his throat. If you have your gun drawn, relesing the X button lightly will put the gun down without firing. Those things will have to be reworked if a port is made.

Sega Saturn

[Shadow_139]

I remember they did this with the Saturn.., I sat on the shelf of ages and no body was buying, the PS had taken over...

Virgin Mehastores sold it stock of real cheap just before xmas about £35 for the unit and £2-15 for the games...,
I just missed out on it, but and a friend got a crapload of stuff from it even got the crap fishing game with real pole for £5...,he ripped the sensors out of it.
It allso have a full keyboard and modem for the this Web on TV crap...,
Anybody got *nx running on the thing?