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Nintendo's Early 2005 Strategy
Gamespot has an overview of Nintendo's strategy for the next few months. DS sales, female users, and penetration of the older market is up, while DS software sales are down owing to bundled software. The Big N is still trying to decide how much information to share about the Revolution at E3. From the article: "We want to receive some level of evaluation, but releasing too much information is also another issue. We don't have the slightest intention of making a machine that follows the same path as conventional game hardware."
"Many disputed this assertion, but Nintendo has become increasingly reliant upon its existing franchises- especially Mario and Zelda (and to a lesser extent, Smash Bros. which includes both)"
It's disputed because Nintendo has 6 billion in the bank to play with, whereas Sega had to drop the Dreamcast because they didn't have the money they needed to build DC units to sell. A million units cost like 200 million to build, and they didn't have the money.
"Gamecube simply can't compete."
It doesn't need to compete, it merely needs to make a profit. Since Nintendo's franchises are successful, they're not having a prob with that. They really should try to get more marketshare, but they're a long ways off from being the next Sega.
"Derp de derp."
There are plusses and minuses on both sides of the cartridge versus CD debate, and they've been used again and again in flame wars for a decade now. I don't think there's any reason to get into it again.
The lack of loading screens in Nintendo's games is due in small part to the disc size and in large part to clever design. In Metroid Prime, doors simply don't open until the next room is loaded. In Zelda, the huge open ocean hid the loading times. There are some more technical tricks they can employ, too.
As for the size of the discs, I've heard that one of the reasons Grand Theft Auto 3 didn't make it to the Gamecube is that the game's world couldn't fit on one Gamecube disc. Since the entire city had to be traversable at any given time, it couldn't simply be broken up for multiple discs. If that's true, then it does suggest some amount of shortsightedness for not anticipating game worlds of such size and detail in this generation, but that's not something I think anyone can blame Nintendo for missing.