Nintendo in panic mode, film at 11

[vsp]

The Nintendo GameCube is... drumroll, please... not QUITE dead yet, but officially in the cancer ward as of this weekend.

Let us compare deals:

PS2: System at $199, retailers might toss in a $10 carrying case if you're lucky that week.

Xbox: System at $199, with two free pack-in games (Sega GT and Jet Set Radio Future; not bad, but not exactly top-tier titles either)

Cube at Best Buy: System at $149, with METROID PRIME (THE hot game right now for the system) or one of three other titles free with purchase

Cube at Circuit City: System at _$139_, with Metroid Prime or one of three other titles free with purchase

One-thirty-nine, sixty bucks below the competition, AND with a popular fifty-dollar game (one that most new Cube owners would've bought separately) thrown in as well. Yikes. Microsoft's pack-in deal was an act of desperation; this is move-some-hardware-before-we-throw-in-the-towel-and-stick-to-Game-Boy-development territory.

(Yes, yes, Zelda is coming, Zelda is coming. But the same people who swear that Zelda will be a massive system-seller and Zelda will revitalize the GameCube said the same thing about Metroid Prime.)

Further sign of doom: Sega of America just dropped all sports support for the Cube. "Ouch," I say. Not that I'm complaining too much -- massive Cube price drops are good for me, as it'll be that much sooner that I'll feel like buying one and Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem for cheap for my wife.

[SteveDallas]

I knew Nintendo was having problems, but hadn't looked at prices lately. That does not seem to bode well. Of course, the original Playstation kicked the Nintendo 64's butt. So this has been coming a long time.

Nobody really cares (well ALMOST nobody) what kind of hardware they have... it's the games. So how did Nintendo manage to lose their edge with developers? Is it because they won't license games that are too "grownup"? (Maybe I'm wrong on this one, cause I don't pay much attention, but every game I hear a lot about for being nasty, like Vice City or DOA Beach Volleyball, seems to be for PS2 and/or Xbox but not Gamecube.)

Maybe they need to recapture market with an updated Virtual Boy!!!

[vsp]

Nintendo lives and dies solely by the imagination of Shigeru Miyamoto, and Miyamoto's gaming visions are invariably cute, brightly-colored and family-friendly. Without Miyamoto, Nintendo would still be selling Hanafuda playing cards in Japanese shops, instead of being the worldwide multimedia juggernaut they are today.

It's not that there's anything inherently wrong with Miyamoto's style; his games are almost invariably innovative in design, whole consoles have been built around his visions, and many "mature" designers credit him as a primary influence. Where he goes, the faithful follow. The trick is that Nintendo needs to deliver more than that to dip into the ever-growing 18-and-up gamer demographic; Miyamoto chooses not to go there, and no one else has a killer app waiting to fill that void.

Nintendo is acutely aware that the "Nintendo is for KIDS" image is both a stigma and a selling point for their consoles. Many parents bought the N64, then the Cube specifically because they knew they'd find Brightly-Colored Run-And-Jump Action-Adventure Games with familiar characters for those systems, and wouldn't have to worry about Junior bringing home something nasty for it. (Look at Super Mario Sunshine, which fits that description to a T -- a B-C R-A-J A-A Game with Mario, packing a non-lethal water cannon on an environmentally-friendly mission and singing with marching children in the TV commercials. And THAT was the biggest release for the Cube in 2002.)

On the flip side, no matter how good the game itself may have been, how many teens-and-older saw Mario imitating Captain Planet on TV, wrote it off as being childish and laughed their asses off, before switching over to Grand Theft Auto 3?

Nintendo isn't blind; they've seen the PSX/PS2 stomp their sales into the ground by catering to older gamers (many of whom grew up with the NES and SNES, but want something different now), and they want some of that action as well. They spent some serious cash on the Resident Evil licences, pushed games like Eternal Darkness, and allowed a raunchy version of BMX:XXX on the Cube. (The latter, much like Conker's Bad Fur Day on the N64, is essentially raunch for the sake of raunch, with all the depth and subtlety of a Benny Hill sketch. Not that that's necessarily bad, of course, but...) Metroid Prime shows what the console is capable of -- a shooter that combines franchise appeal, flashy sci-fi graphics and mature themes to great effect.

But games like Metroid Prime just aren't coming from third-parties, and are clearly the exception rather than the rule on the Cube. It's not entirely a licencing issue; developers just aren't putting in the R&D on mature games for the Cube, because the built-in audience for those games is already on the PS2 and (in lesser numbers, but still a higher percentage than on the Cube) on the Xbox. Worse yet, when major developers like Sega are starting to drop Cube projects, that's a red flag for smaller teams to cave in and go where the more guaranteed money is, instead of taking a chance that games like theirs will help the Cube take off.

And what's the Next Big Thing on the Cube, and probably its only major release before summer? The new Zelda, with cel-shaded graphics that make it look more cartoony than the rest of the series combined, and a bonus disc rehashing an N64 Zelda hit. As always, Miyamoto will save the day and pay the bills.

[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. 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.
So whats the big difference between Xbox and GameCube? Well Microsoft can afford to have a bad year. They lost more than 150million so far on Xbox, so they throw in another 1/2 billion, big deal. If Nintendo doesnt have a good run...well then we might not see another system out of them.
Personaly, i like the gamecube, i have a ps2 as well, and lord knows i think halo is the best game ever, but i think the gamecube is a great system. It has the good titles, and it has the great ones that are only from Nintendo. the new Zelda looks great, and 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? 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. the GC is doing just fine.

[vsp]

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.
...
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.)

[TrenchMouth]

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache...ndex2.php4</a>
just shows PS2 dominance there but hey, i have one of those as it is. is this link aged? sure, a bit. but is it accurate? o yea.

The market-share argument depends on whose sets of numbers you are useing, and whether you include Japan in the figures.

well if you dont include Japan you dont include the place where most of our games come from now do you? oops. that would be like conducting a number on market share and not including the US, hey why dont we take out Europe while we are at it and just take the numbers from Tonga, they only have 10 systems that should make it easier to count.

in the end i think it would be nice to have 3 good consoles on the market, and as far as online gaming is concerned...i only play on my computer, just the idea of playing ps2 on a modem is a nightmare. i have given Capcom vs SNK a shot, but holy shit it sucked. MechAssult is by far the best online console game so far.

so does Sega pulling out their sports games hurt GC. Yea it does, but from what i can tell through places like gamespot, they wont be missed. EA has the lockdown there. Square, Sega, and EA are still contributing time to the GC, that should be enough for now. Who is ready for F-Zero, Zelda and Mario 128? I am.

[wolf]

I was once a dedicated nintendo fan ... I still play with my gameboy (yes, including catching all those damn pokemon) and N64. (My sister has my SNES, otherwise I'd still be cranking away with that too).

But since they killed the 64, I don't feel the love anymore. And the decision to go with the odd-format-out for the GC finalized MY decision to buy a PS2 ... I don't have a lot of room on the entertainment center, and wanted a DVD player.

I've been playing with a friend's GC a lot. I go over to her house every week and we trade off on playing Mario Sunshine (you play until you die, or can no longer tolerate the heckling of everyone who is not playing). Certainly a cute game, but not worth buying the system for, IMHO. And the newest incarnation of Zelda is not enough to make me do it either.

Consider ... I never had another brand game system in the house before this. Nintendo's failure to provide backward compatibility for their systems is also part of what's hurting them ... despite promising it, incidentally ... the 64 had a cart-adaptor planned for SNES games that was never released, and the GB Transfer Pak turned out to be just a way of getting people to buy the GB versions of N64 games rather than the adaptor that the SNES version had been.

I find it interesting, also, that Sony has chosen not to totally alienate the PSX/PSONE owner base ... games are still being released for that system. Yeah, not a lot, but they are coming out.

Ah, what do i know.

[Elspode]

I'm certainly not as knowledgeable as all of you other folks, but I'm at least equally opinionated, and I want to inject here the following...

Once Sony releases their hard drive add-on for PS2 this year, there will be no touching them, period. I haven't tried out their network gizmo yet, but my kids are begging for it, and if it works, I'm guessing this will be another nail in the coffin of both XBox and Gamecube.

How much that hard drive add-on gonna cost?

All games going to be able to take advantage of it? Even ones that have been out for years?

Is there any reason to believe that more than 10% of PS2 owners will adopt it, considering that no add-on has really ever achieved penetration greater than 10%?

There's no coffin for the Xbox. Thus, there can be no nails in a coffin.

Microsoft has over FORTY BILLION dollars in the bank, and it grows by about a billion a month. They could send every PS2 owner in the WORLD an Xbox and some games, buy a controlling share of Sony and still have billions of dollars left. It's absolutely silly to think that Xbox is going away. Microsoft knows what they're getting in to.

[perth]

Originally posted by dave
They could send every PS2 owner in the WORLD an Xbox and some games,

and they can start with me.

the people with the money want a ps2 or xbox. the people who want the gamecube will settle for a ps2 or xbox. nintendo should get out of the home console market and stick to handhelds, because theyve clearly demonstrated that they know handhelds and *can* dominate that market. but they wont, because theyre stubborn. and so they will go the way of sega, pushing their hardware until theyre forced out of that game. and unless nintendo is painfully stupid, the consumer will reap the benefits. imagine a game like metroid prime on the xbox. i dont think ms can beat sony per se (not this round anyway), but they arent going anywhere.

~james

Microsoft is in a great position hardware-wise. If they can get some decent games as exclusives for the system, I think Xbox 2 will compare favorably (and perhaps even beat) PS3.

Sony has a lot of development to do for the PS3. They need to create new processors, video, etc. Microsoft has to do none of this, basically allowing them to release a new Xbox whenever they want to. Sony says they're releasing their PS3 in June 2005? No problem - Microsoft is putting out Xbox 2 in January of that same year. Guess what? It's got a 4 GHz processor, a 120 gig drive, 512 megs of RAM, can burn game replays and TV shows to DVD and it costs $300. All they have to do is drop in a faster processor, more RAM, a bigger hard drive... they took the open approach whereas Sony has the totally proprietary box. So MS is in a great position here.

MS just needs to get more systems out there. When they do this, publishers are more likely to give them exclusive titles. Who ever thought we'd see Metal Gear Solid on Xbox? But there it is. Not an exclusive, mind you, but Microsoft has the money to make these things happen. The scary thing is that they <b>will</b> make these happen, because they want a way into your house. They need that Microsoft console/device sitting by your TV. So they're willing to dump a ton of money at this.

Okay, so what can't they do? Play PS2 & PS games legally. This could probably be added, and definitely could have, if Sony hadn't purchased the emulator from Connectix. Personally, if I were Connectix, I would have contacted Microsoft and held out for more. Who knows though, Microsoft may be developing an emulator for PS2 & PS games. Connectix won in court, which means Microsoft might too. What if Xbox 2 could play Xbox, Xbox 2, PS 2 & PS games <b>and</b> had great exclusive titles? Who wouldn't buy one?

[elSicomoro]

Dave makes some interesting points...and they concern me.

MS is making gonzo bucks. They control the operating system of most computers, they control the browser tool of most computers, and now they're losing money on X-Box...yet not breaking a sweat.

Here's my concern: If MS can get games exclusive to X-Box, then what'll happen? Will MS slack off and not feel obliged to make X-Box better? Will a PS2 or PS3 or PS65 become a niche machine?

For the past 20 years, game systems have gotten better...there's been competition more or less. I can remember having my Atari 2600, but then getting an Intellivision, then seeing the 7800 come out, then the NES. One system has generally ruled the market (NES, Genesis, PSX), but there's always been a nice alternative (Sega Master System, SNES, N64). With Nintendo falling off and Sega pulling out of systems, I just hope someone out there will be ingenious and innovative enough to still offer a nice alternative.

[jaguar]

It's all very, very hard to tell. I'm mean lets face it, they're turning into computers. HDDs, Netoworking. How long till you can buy an extra 512 for your xbox2?

For all it's money though MSFT can't throw that much at the Xbox, the next windows is slated for what, 2005 now? Every division of msft is losing cash apart from Office and Windows which are under heavier fire from the competition than ever before.

Set top PCs are starting to appear on the market, homebrew DVRs aren't that hard at all. The XboX seems to have been MSFTs backdoor into the living room, i don't think this will succeed.

[perth]

Originally posted by jaguar
How long till you can buy an extra 512 for your xbox2?

ugh. i fervently hope that never happens. the day i have to patch a console game is the day i swear off gaming altogether.

~james

[jaguar]

Well this is the point? Buy netowrk, buy HDDS, buy this, buy that, upgrade this.....Where is the line drawn between computer and console?