US, January 14, 2004 - Nintendo's vice president of corporate affairs recently returned from time off with her newborn daughter and updated us on GameCube sales in the US, some developments for 2004 and more. She also used her powerful Jedi mind tricks to make us believe she was giving us new information on the future when in fact she was merely dodging our questions. Following that interview:
IGNcube: So tell us, why is everyone at Nintendo so happy?
Perrin Kaplan: Well, number-one we did incredibly well in 2003 on both of our hardware systems. In fact, we basically won 2003 and moved ourselves to the number two spot and Microsoft's Xbox to number three.
IGNcube: And this is in the US or is this worldwide?
Perrin: In the US.
IGNcube: That's excellent news. Congratulations. So let's go over this from the beginning. How were December GameCube sales?
Perrin: Year-on-year we were up 68.5% [in December] based on units sold. We sold about 1.1 million GameCubes in December. We did a little under half a million in December of last year by comparison. For the whole year we were up 35%. Our competitors were both in the negative.
IGNcube: Wow, that's fantastic news.
Perrin: It's really good.
IGNcube: How about GameCube life-to-date sales in the US?
Perrin: We're at 6.8 million GameCubes sold in the US life-to-date and we sold about 3.17 million of those this year.
IGNcube: Excellent. That's in the US though. What about global sales?
Perrin: On global sales, I don't know if you saw but Iwata made a comment to Reuters that our global holiday sales were up 70% year-on-year.
IGNcube: What does that equate to exactly, do you have a figure?
Perrin: I don't have specific global sales but I do know that during the holiday all markets were up, which I have to say has not always been the case.
IGNcube: How many units of Mario Kart: Double Dash!! have you sold in the US so far?
Perrin: Mario Kart is a little over a million units sold in seven weeks, which makes it the fastest-selling GameCube game.
IGNcube: So it's going to finally dethrone Super Smash Bros. Melee, huh?
Perrin: Yep. Yep.
IGNcube: What about GameCube software sales for the year in the US?
Perrin: GameCube software sales for the year were up 53% over 2002 and for the December period in particular they were up 41%.
IGNcube: Microsoft reps said that sales of Xbox beat out GameCube during the last two weeks of December. What is your response?
Perrin: Probably two things. First, I'm not sure if that period is relevant when we have already won the year. And second, because we were selling so much so fast we have seen some retail outlets start to have dry shelves and that's probably why that happened.
IGNcube: Do you have any indication that GameCube sales have been sustained in January?
Perrin: You know, I would say not as heavily because we don't have as much product in the pipeline so we're trying to move it. We just plain started having some retailers run out of stuff.
IGNcube: All right. So you're saying that GameCube is now definitely number-two sales-wise here in the US, beating Xbox.
Perrin: Right.
http://au.cube.ign.com/articles/463/463155p1.html
So the year was 2003 and GameCube made what seemed to be a huge comeback after it's major price cut with the PS2 and XBOX both being down YoY. We need to calm down with the whole PS3 sales rise and get back to reality. Yes it's been an impressive few weeks but it's just a blip when you look at the big picture. Wait until next year to see how it's fairing overall.
