I know that the reason why the Gamecube sold so poorly has been discussed a lot (and is only part of what this thread is about), but it seems like the general consensus always ends up being that it was primarily because of the lack of third party support. Well now the Wii is here doing phenomenally, and it is doing it without the help of many big third party titles (Sure there are a couple games like the GH franchise that have done well but they aren't selling the system). The Wii is selling off the strength of Nintendo's own IP's. But most of those were on the Gamecube as well. In fact a lot of those games were on the Gamecube, and they sold almost as well then as they have on the Wii (yes I'm shamelessly promoting my own thread), except games like Mario Kart or Mario Party. Games like Smash Bros.,Mario, Zelda, Animal Crossing and Metroid have all seen only 30% growth over last gen or less, compared to the ~144% the Wii hardware has already grown over the Gamecube.
Now let's compare the sales of the GC's software to PS3's software. Yes I know the GC had longer to sell that software than the PS3 has, but the GC has more million sellers 41 to 32, more really big games (5 million+), and of those games many more of Gamecube's titles were exlcusive than PS3's are. Yet the PS3 has already outsold the GC's lifetime sales. So are software sales less important than people think? Will the release of Nintendo's 3 big Wii titles this year (yes I just did it again), actually be enough to boost hardware sales back up, or do they need to find what other factors are important for hardware sales? If software really is the driving force behind hardware sells than that makes the Wii's new IP's like Wii Sports/Resort, Wii Fit, Wii Play even more impressive than their huge software sales.
A thread that started by a simple question has become fairly convoluted, so I'm going to summarise the points I'd like people to talk about.
- If it wasn't the lack of big third party software (because Wii is doing fine without it), why did the Gamecube do so badly?
- Why weren't all of Nintendo's titles, that sold well on GC, enough for it to move more hardware than it did.
- If Nintendo's franchise games are only selling a little better on the Wii than on the GC, are games like Wii Sports/Resort/Wii Fit/Wii Play really able to account for the huge increase in sales for the Wii (It seems likely the Wii will sell a 100 million or more than the GC when it stops selling)?
- Is Iwata wrong, does software really move hardware?
