How Nintendo Could Win It All

ElFozzie writes "In a huge piece on mobile gaming, Pocket Gamer reports on the latest battles in the handheld console market and reveals why Nintendo might just have the right strategy to win this war. From the article: 'Let's go back the beginning, the games. It's all about the games, Nintendo's faithful fans will argue, and the DS has great, mad and unique games where the PSP so far has, at best, competent-to-very-good PS2-lite fare. Yes, but it's not that simple. See, I was there in the mid '90s playing the genre-defining Mario 64 and the breathtaking Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, perhaps the two greatest games of their generation, on the Nintendo 64. And I remember Sony going on to win that war, and PlayStation becoming the de facto shorthand for 'video games'."

Comments

Re:It's like comparing apples and idiots

[Nephroth]

Um... PSPs used to play movies. Sony has announced that the UMD movie format will be retired...

Re:I don't like...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just 10 huh?

Ok let's start at the top:

Eternal Darkness
Resident Evil 4
Super Smash Bros. Melee
Super Mario Sunshine
Pikmin
Pikmin 2
Mario Golf
Mario Kart: Double Dash
Metroid Prime
Metroid Prime 2
Legend of Zelda: Windwaker
Ikaruga
Four Swords Adventures
Crystal Chronicles
F-Zero GX

Other fantastic non-exclusive titles include Ubisoft's entire game library, like the Prince of Persia and Splinter Cell franchises, Beyond Good & Evil, King Kong, etc. Not to mention some killer collections (Mega Man, Mega Man X, TWO Sonic anthologies) and indie releases like Alien Hominid. And let's not even bother with the "quality over quantity" argument!

Now, I will grant that both Crystal Chronicles and Metroid Prime 2 had some disappointing aspects, and everyone knows the gamecube hasn't seen any notable releases since RE4. To boot, the PS2 had a REALLY banner year this time around (Gradius V, God of War, We (Heart) Katamari, Guitar Hero, Shadow of the Colossus) but that is NOT normal. I had to go dig my PS2 out of the closet last summer because there had been nothing but Ratchet and EA Sports sequels for the previous 2 or 3 years, and all of a sudden there were GAMES! Just because the PS2 (finally) had a good year doesn't mean the gamecube all of a sudden has no library.

Re:Some things that will help

[earthbound kid]

Well, I suck.

From the Wikipedia,

The Nintendo GameCube uses a unique storage medium, the GameCube Optical Disc, a proprietary format based on Matsushita's optical-disc technology; the discs are approximately 8 centimeters (3 1/8 inches) in diameter (considerably smaller than the 12 cm CDs or DVDs used in competitors' consoles), and the discs have a capacity of approximately 1.5 gigabytes. Contrary to popular belief, GameCube discs are not physically read any differently from a standard DVD disc, but are encrypted and contain a 'bar code' unreadable by most DVD drives. This move was mainly intended to prevent piracy of GCN titles, but like most anti-piracy technology, it was eventually cracked. By exploiting a flaw in Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II, users were able to connect their GameCubes to their PCs and run homebrew programming on the console.

Damn you, popular belief! *Shakes fist*

Re:Heck....

[nevergleam]

That price range was for games newly developed for the virtual console, not classic titles.

http://wii.ign.com/articles/711/711629p1.html

There's no confirmation yet as to prices of classic titles.

Re:Wii're Gonna Fail

[uglysad]

Cut and paste much?

Re:I don't like...

[aronc]

*pulls up GNC release list*
Lesse..

Metroid Prime 1 & 2
Resident Evil 4
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
(and no, i didn't die. But I did have fun, isn't that the point?)
Viewtiful Joe 1 & 2
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
Star Wars Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II
F-Zero GX
Super Smash Bros. Melee (series)
Pikmin 1 & 2
Super Monkey Ball 1 & 2
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Mario Kart: Double Dash!!
Animal Crossing
Ikaruga
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes
The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures
Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean
Star Fox Assault
Sega Soccer Slam
Mario Power Tennis
Mario Golf
WarioWare Inc.: Mega Party Game$

And that's just the exclusives or games that didn't hit other consoles for months. They got ports of probably 80%+ of the other major releases (EA sports, Prince of Persia, Soul Calibur, Tony Hawk, BG&E, Splinter Cell, X-men Legends, Spider-Man 2, Lego Star Wars, etc etc etc)

Re:I don't like...

[ArmyOfFun]

Isn't anyone else ticked off at the fact that there are under 10 games worth owning for the Gamecube?

WTF are you talking about? Here's the list of ~24 games I own that are exclusive to GC (all worth owning):
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
F-Zero GX
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
Geist
The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Luigi's Mansion
Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour
Mario Kart: Double Dash!!
Metroid Prime
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Pikmin
Pikmin 2
Ribbit King
Star Fox Adventures
Star Fox: Assault
Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader
Super Mario Sunshine
Super Smash Bros. Melee
Tales of Symphonia
WarioWare, Inc.
Wave Race: Blue Storm

Here are GC games I own that are available on at least 1 other platform. Most are worth owning, though there are about 4 exceptions (*cough* "Muppets Party Cruise" *cough*):
Beyond Good & Evil
Call of Duty: Finest Hour
Dead to Rights
GUN
The Hobbit
Killer 7
Peter Jackson's King Kong
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Metal Arms: Glitch in the System
Midway Arcade Treasures 2
Midway Arcade Treasures 3
Monopoly Party
Muppets Party Cruise
Resident Evil 4
Second Sight
The Simpsons Hit & Run
Skies of Arcadia Legends
Spyro: A Hero's Tail
Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly
Starsky & Hutch
Super Monkey Ball
Super Monkey Ball 2
TimeSplitters 2
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4
True Crime: New York City
True Crime: Streets of LA
Turok: Evolution
Viewtiful Joe
Viewtiful Joe 2
X-Men Legends
XIII

Re:Sales != "shipped"

[Rosebud128]

While this is true, people rely on the 'shipped' numbers only because it appears in the financial statements the companies send out to their shareholders. After all, these companies get their money from the retailers of where they shipped.

However, if someone took those financial statements at face value, they don't have a clue how those statements are to sell the company to the investors. In other words, those statements crafted for sales purposes. The bean-counters on GAF cannot tell the difference. One of the reasons why Sega was destroyed financially was because they believed those financial statements of shipped to retailers meaning actual sales. If a company does not find out how many systems are being sold to customers, they will have an accounting mess as occurred with the early days with the Saturn.

Here is the sales performance of the 7th Generation systems so far...

-Europe-

Xbox 360- Better than the original Xbox so far. This is the Xbox 360's true success so far in this region.

DS- Selling better in Europe than America. More popular in non-english speaking countries such as France. (Nintendogs is still in the top ten list there)

PSP- Selling well but behind the DS.

Conclusion- With Animal Crossing and Brain Age beginning to occupy the best seller lists (plus New Super Mario Brothers), and with the DS Lite coming out, the gap between the PSP and DS will only widen.

-America-

Xbox 360- Selling around the same number as the original Xbox so far. With only 1.7 million sold in America so far, Microsoft is wasting their year head start against Sony.

PSP- Sony has been very aggressive with the PSP in America with massive advertising, packaging the PSP with Daxter, and still the PSP sells around the same rate as the DS. The PSP software sold is about on par with most of the DS software.

DS- DS sales will, of course, go up due to the DS Lite. DS sales have been holding steady. The PSP versus DS war is actually very pathetic since both the PSP and DS are routinely outsold by the GBA. And to add insult to injury, both are outsold by the Gamecube. America is not very interested in handheld gaming apparently.

Conclusion: The DS and PSP are tied in America. However, Nintendo's handheld marketshare is around 70% due to the combination of the DS and GBA. If GBA owners upgrade to the DS, the DS will soundly sail past the PSP in this market.

-Japan-

Xbox 360- LOL. The Xbox 360 has flopped harder than the Xbox in Japan. Currently, it is battling it out with the Gamecube in sales there. The floppage of the Xbox 360 insures that Microsoft cannot win the console war.

PSP- Decent sales and beats the PS2. The software, however, has been atrocious. Japanese view the PSP as a media center, not as a games machine. The sales of Animal Crossing WW in Japan has outsold all the PSP software combined there.

DS- On fire. DS software dominates the best seller's list. DS hardware outsells the PSP from 10 to 1 to 5 to 1. Japan is where the handheld war is being won. The DS is the fastest selling system in Japan ever.

Conclusion: DS has reinvigorated the Japanese market. The American market is currently flat and stagnant. To give you an idea, last month, the Xbox 360 sold around 200,000 consoles in America. In Japan, 100,000 DSes were sold last WEEK. In the week before that, it was 300,000.

Obviously, the shipped of PSP and DS don't equal the number of sold. The DS is beating the PSP by miles in Japan. The DS is ahead of the PSP in Europe. In America, it is tied, but the American market right now is flat and the GBA sales are higher than either handheld.