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Originally posted by TrenchMouth
i mean its clearly obvious that sony is using xbox and game cube as toilet paper, but what most people dont know is that gamecube, not xbox, is in second place with market share. there are about a million more gamecubes floating around in homes (not stores) than xbox.

The market-share argument depends on whose sets of numbers you're using, and whether you include Japan in the figures. The Xbox has been a dismal flop in Japan, but has fared much better in Europe and the U.S., and the recent bump provided by Xbox Live and Microsoft's own holiday pack-in deal was substantial. Not nearly enough to catch Sony, of course -- nothing will do that -- but enough to make the race for #2 extremely competitive. (If you have linkable sales figures that dispute this, fire away.)

on top of that, the reason why it only costs $150 is that Nintendo didnt screw themselves like the other two by using hardware that isnt as cost effective. Sony had countless numbers of problems with PS2 because they decieded to make their own 128bit chip, and Microsoft used technology so much more advanced that even at $300 they still lost money on each console sold.
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On top of all this, just look at the design. Hands down the gamecube has the best design. Dont think of price as an indicator of value.

Console design doesn't sell consoles. Games do. I can rattle off plenty of examples where a technically-inferior console outsold a better-designed competitor -- the Game Boy series alone defied those odds for years. (Between the Game Gear, TurboExpress, Nomad, Lynx and NeoGeo Pocket Color, there's been no shortage of worthy competitors. The GB Advance is a step up in quality, I'll grant, but all of the above were thoroughly dead by the time it was released.)

It has the good titles, and it has the great ones that are only from Nintendo.

If third-party developers start dropping Cube support, it _won't_ have many of "the good titles" for long. Sega dropping sports support is huge in that respect; ask Sega themselves what the effects of a major sports player (EA in the case of the Saturn and Dreamcast) ignoring a console can be. Games that appear on all three consoles don't promote any of them; games that appear on two out of three definitely hurt the third.

And as for Nintendo's exclusives...

...if a game has to LOOK all grown up for you to play it, just remember, you are playing video games, so try to keep reality out of the picture alright?

Sorry, but that's not the way the real world works. Games can be utterly fantastic and still fail to sell well due to image problems.

If you take the time to look past the box art and character designs and actually play Animal Crossing, Mario Sunshine, Pikmin or Super Monkey Ball, they're all positively-reviewed, entertaining games at heart. But they LOOK like pastel-colored fluff, and in a world where the Cube's competitors both aggressively court an older demographic, that's not a selling point. More so, Mario Sunshine and Animal Crossing in particular were heavily MARKETED as pastel-colored fluff, which is a complete 180 from the direction of Microsoft's marketing tactics.

The faithful will always turn out and buy any Nintendo console that has the familiar franchises; Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Pokemon and such guarantee sales at a certain level, which isn't in doubt. The war is for the hearts and minds of the _casual_ gamers, the ones who weren't weaned on Fire Flowers and Triforces, or the ones who grew up playing Super Mario Bros. but are a lot older now.

Microsoft saw the PS1 and PS2's successes, largely predicated on attracting an older demographic, and they're doing their best to tap into that market. Apart from some token efforts, Nintendo isn't -- they're preferring to maintain the Cube as a more family-friendly, younger-skewing alternative. Miyamoto's games have always leaned that way, so it's not as if that's not playing to one of their strengths, but Nintendo's consoles cannot survive on JUST their franchise titles, simply because there aren't enough of them.

Metroid was a boost, and a marvelous game from all accounts -- which highlights the immense statement made by Nintendo's GIVING IT AWAY FREE with their console. (Yipes.) Zelda will boost sales, certainly. But after that, what's coming soon that isn't available for other platforms? Mario Kart, Mario 128, Mario Tennis, GC Pokemon, and other sequels are all in TBA-land, release dates unspecified. Unlike Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo doesn't have a strong online strategy -- it's Phantasy Star Online and a cloud of dust. If there's an exclusive killer-app (besides Zelda) between now and the end of the year on the Cube, I'd like to know what it is.

Don't get me wrong -- I don't _want_ to see the GameCube fail, or think that it's an inherently bad system. I'd be perfectly happy with the PS2 and Cube running one-and-two, each system catering to a particular audience. I just see the writing on the wall, and could see Nintendo once again refocusing their R&D into the gaming venue where they _do_ have market dominance -- the portables. (The fact that more games haven't been written with GBA-GC link capabilities stuns me; it's a huge hardware advantage waiting to be tapped.)