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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Interesting Quote About the GameCube's Design

It has all been down hill since Yamauchi died



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zorg1000 said:
So Gamecube & Wii U both had the intention of reclaiming "hardcore" gamers by way of 3rd party support and are Nintendo's worst selling consoles, maybe it would be wise to give up on them.

O_o' how can this statement be true? .. its hard to think they where actually trying to get 3rd party back with it.



Nintendo could have made a god box and it wouldn't matter to 3rd party publishers. Sales matter to them. Unless they have a specific deal that benefits them, they will always go where the sales are. Activision would still make CoD games on 360 if its guaranteed 5 million in sales at launch.



But Nintendo also wanted to attract third parties to the Wii U, and while that went well initially, once the Wii U started lagging in sales and third party games had bad sales, third party support dried up.

They even listened to third parties when designing the console: http://nintendoeverything.com/gearbox-nintendo-has-listened-to-wii-u-feedback-controller-specs-will-be-awesome/

“We were early in seeing what was happening with the Wii U and we’ve been able to give some feedback. They’ve listened, and I think we’ll see some cool stuff that we’ve had some influence over. I think the final controller specs are going to be awesome.”

A lot of third parties were on board in the beginning: EA, Ubisoft, Activision, Warner Bros., THQ... But sales were bad, so they stopped caring for the Wii U.
http://www.gamesradar.com/e3-2011-wii-u-getting-support-from-ea-ubisoft-thq-and-other-big-third-party-devs/

So it's not that much that Nintendo doesn't care about third parties, it's just that the people buying their consoles don't seem to care about it. So, unless their consoles actually sell very well, third parties aren't going to take off, unless their games specifically target the demographic on Nintendo consoles (platformers, party games... tend to sell well on Nintendo consoles)



 

Farsala said:


The other factor vvith that is it simply vvasn't a dvd player. If it had cheap, dvd player, and strongest console vvith 3rd party support, then I think Gamecube vvould be better off.

But other things come into play like marketing, and big money deals.


The original Xbox wasn't a dvd player out of the box either, you needed to buy a dvd adapter thing for it that cost about €50 here in Ireland, still cheaper than most dvd players at the time but I guess the original Xbox didn't really stand much competition to the monster PS2 at the time either.



Why not check me out on youtube and help me on the way to 2k subs over at www.youtube.com/stormcloudlive

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zorg1000 said:
So Gamecube & Wii U both had the intention of reclaiming "hardcore" gamers by way of 3rd party support and are Nintendo's worst selling consoles, maybe it would be wise to give up on them.


Casuals aren't buying another console in the smartphone era either. They got their fill of waggling around in front of a TV last time. Nintendo's decision to make smartphone games is basically admitting that they know they can no longer draw this crowd, so they are going to them on iPhone/Android.

So that leaves Nintendo with basically their standard fan base and the remaining kids who still want a dedicated game handheld (which is a shrinking crowd). 



Soundwave said:
zorg1000 said:
So Gamecube & Wii U both had the intention of reclaiming "hardcore" gamers by way of 3rd party support and are Nintendo's worst selling consoles, maybe it would be wise to give up on them.


Casuals aren't buying another console in the smartphone era either. They got their fill of waggling around in front of a TV last time. Nintendo's decision to make smartphone games is basically admitting that they know they can no longer draw this crowd, so they are going to them on iPhone/Android.

So that leaves Nintendo with basically their standard fan base and the remaining kids who still want a dedicated game handheld (which is a shrinking crowd). 

Well ur basing that off of pretty much nothing, Nintendo made a console that doesn't appeal to casuals this generation, that however doesn't mean casuals are no longer willing to buy consoles.



When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.

zorg1000 said:
Soundwave said:


Casuals aren't buying another console in the smartphone era either. They got their fill of waggling around in front of a TV last time. Nintendo's decision to make smartphone games is basically admitting that they know they can no longer draw this crowd, so they are going to them on iPhone/Android.

So that leaves Nintendo with basically their standard fan base and the remaining kids who still want a dedicated game handheld (which is a shrinking crowd). 

Well ur basing that off of pretty much nothing, Nintendo made a console that doesn't appeal to casuals this generation, that however doesn't mean casuals are no longer willing to buy consoles.

To say the Wii U isn't aimed at casuals I think is a bit of a lark. It's branded the Wii. A casual brand. All the TV marketing was for the casual/family demographic. Half of Nintendo's first year titles were party/mini-games. The lead title for the system was Nintendo Land, a game aimed specifically at casuals. It uses a toucscreen controller similar to other popular casual gaming devices like the DS and iPad. 

To say this system was aimed at hardcore players is a laugh. The PLAYSTATION 4 is aimed at, marketed to, and built for core gamers. 

Wii U was aimed largely at casuals with a few concessions thrown in to hardcore players (here's clickable analog sticks and a port of a crappy Ninja Gaiden game and the same Call of Duty you can already play on the your PS3/XBox!). 

Nintendo just failed this time out because that's the nature of the "gimmick controller" beast ... sometimes it hits, but the Wii U showed the dark side of that approach ... if your controller idea doesn't take off, then you're basically screwed. It's not even like they divorced the Wiimote from the Wii U. You can't even play the pack-in title (Nintendo Land) without Wiimotes, as the game basically requires Wiimotes for any kind of multiplayer. The system was clearly designed to be sold to the existing Wii audience. Heck in Japan the Wiimote still comes bundled with the Wii U, yet this is the lowest selling market for the system. 



I think Nintendo needs to focus on games that attract western customers at the popularity level of Halo or Uncharted. If they create a fanbase that likes those types of games, third parties will be more attracted to their system. Their current fanbase just don't buy anything outside the usual Nintendo style games, and even their more western style IPs like Metroid have problems reaching the sale levels they should have. Or they can just tell the third parties to go F themselves.



“Simple minds have always confused great honesty with great rudeness.” - Sherlock Holmes, Elementary (2013).

"Did you guys expected some actual rational fact-based reasoning? ...you should already know I'm all about BS and fraudulence." - FunFan, VGchartz (2016)

foxtail said:
Shadow1980 said:

The GameCube had decent third-party support, but it fell way short of the PS2 in that regard, and even the Xbox had better third-party suport than the GC. The likely culprit? The little guy on the left here:

With less than one-third the capacity of even a single-sided single-layer DVD (1.5GB vs. 4.7GB), the GC's proprietary miniDVD format didn't do the system any favors. Now, I know there's all the "Well, they could have just split the game across multiple discs" talk, and sure, there's been plenty of multi-disc games before and after, but A) they weren't exactly common, B) some games probably couldn't get split across multiple discs as they take place in a single contiguous environment (think GTA), and C) I honestly doubt that anybody really wanted to split their games across multiple discs and usually only did so when it was necessary (even CD's 700MB capacity was not enough for many PS1 games; it was just a hell of sight better than the 64MB that the biggest N64 carts could hold, plus CDs cost a lot less to make). Not only is it extra work to split just one port up into multiple discs, but it also incurs greater expense (you're talking about an extra dollar or two per copy in manufacturing costs, which does add up). While a handful of publishers felt it was worth it for at least some titles, many major third-party games that came to PS2 and Xbox were no-shows on the GameCube, and the non-standard format is the only plausible explanation why.

The Xbox 360 had over 50 games which were multiple disc and it didn't seem to be a problem.

The X360 was an HD system stuck using DVDs while the PS3 was using high capacity Blu-rays.

Before they updated in 2011, X360 discs were locked at 6.8GB max due to a portion of the disc being reserved for security.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl on the Wii was 7.4GB, that SD Wii game was bigger than a lot of single disc 360 games which were HD.

As for the Gamecube ports , the discs were a problem for larger open world games,

but most other games could be ported with multiple discs if they really wanted to.  

The problem that generation was that most the better 3rd party games were payed exclusives and payed to stay off the other systems.

Also the original Xbox had some good 3rd party support, especially from the West, but it ended up doing just as poorly as the Gamecube in terms of system sales compared against the PS2.

FYI some Wii games are double layered which that means they have bigger size than other usually because: The game has so many voice acting (Xenoblade), The game has so many cutscene (Brawl), or the game is a compilation of multiple games (Prime Trilogy). 



A handheld gamer only (for now).