Innovation in software is the source of Nintendo's decline

[LordTheNightKnight]

RolStoppable said:

LordTheNightKnight said:

RolStoppable said:

That still doesn't answer the question where all those people who bought Metroid Prime went when Echoes launched. What was it that severly damaged Echoes already before its release? Can't be reviews, can't be word of mouth as the game wasn't even out at that point.

GC decline actually answers that. Note how RE4 and Twilight Princess, both also late GC games, had far less sales compared to their PS2/Wii counterparts. Prime 3 had a larger opening, but Prime 1 still had better legs than both.

Unacceptable answer.

Twilight Princess launched two years after Metroid Prime 2 and on top of that the Wii version released one week before the GC version. Not comparable at all.

Resident Evil 4 launched two months after Metroid Prime 2 (so it is comparable) and ended up being the Gamecube's bestselling RE title (higher than REmake and Zero, the three ports don't matter here). The Gamecube decline doesn't seem to have really affected RE4 which even had another thing going against it: Capcom announcing a PS2 version before it was released on the GC. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, however, was a true exclusive.

Therefore, the Gamecube decline isn't and can't be the answer to my question.

Two years later doesn't mean the decline didn't start until then, so that's not a counter.

Presenting an alternative to RE4 might be one, but the announcement was extremely close to the release, which also makes it unlikely to hurt initial sales. Plus just because it outsold the other two means you are assuming they had identical appeal, which doesn't work that way.

Therefore you cannot use those to outright dismiss the decline as a possibility. The GC's biggest hits came from 2001-2003. The only GC game selling over 2 million and released initially in 2004 or later was Paper Mario 2. One game.

EDIT: But even if that isn't the case, it is a false dichotomy to insist that the only other cause has to be inflated sales of the first game, and some kind of lock on the series audience.