I Wish Microsoft Never Entered The Gaming Business (From a Nintendo POV)

[NightDragon83]

Soundwave said:

NightDragon83 said:
I don't agree that the Xbox really hurt GCN sales... if M$ never threw their hat in the ring, last gen simply would have been PS1 vs N64 all over again, only with an even larger disparity between sales of their respective consoles.

I think if anything the Xbox took away more potential PS2 sales than it did the GCN, especially here in the west. Exclusives like Halo 1 & 2, the best online service on consoles plus ports of major 3rd party AAA games like the GTA and MGS games convinced alot of people to get an Xbox over a PS2. If Xbox didn't exist, I guarantee you that a minimum of 75% of its sales would have went to the PS2 instead, probably more.

I disagree, I think Nintendo spent years making the GameCube friendly to develop for and was poised to get a good amount of third party support but that was kinda upstaged by MS making an even easier platform to develop for (basically a PC in a box). All the Western devs flocked that way. So that hurt Nintendo.

Being the only viable alternative to Sony would've at least gaurunteed Nintendo a good amount of the spotlight too, with three consoles, the GameCube seemed to be the one that always ended up getting lost in the mix.

I respectfully disagree with your disagreement.  Ease of development didn't really matter much in the grand scheme of things... the PS2 was by far the toughest of the three to program for by most accounts, yet it left the others in the dust in terms of software content and sales. 

I think what hurt the GC the most was Nintendo themselves.   Both the DVD medium and online gaming were really starting to take off at the beginning of last gen, and rather than embracing these new innovations with open arms, Nintendo went in the exact opposite direction.  They offered yet another proprietary storage format that, while it didn't have much impact on the games themselves this time, completely eliminated the possibility of movie playback, something that was a big selling point and added value to consumers with the PS2 and Xbox.  They also all but dismissed online gaming, instead offering up only ONE online title, while both the PS2 and especially the Xbox introduced online gaming to the living room in a big way and helped pave the way for great services like Xbox Live and PSN over this past gen.  Meanwhile, three generations later and Nintendo STILL hasn't figured out this whole online thing.

Oh, and last but not least... the GameCube looked like a damn lunchbox for pre-schoolers.  Yeah, not exactly the image you want your state-of-the-art gaming console to project to potential buyers, is it?