| TheLastStarFighter said: I've heard it said that when empires are failing they often do the one thing that is the exact opposite of what they should do. That was the Gamecube. But it's not where things went off the rails for Nintendo. That was clearly the N64. Not having CDs and losing the exclusive 3rd party relationship they had with key companies like Squaresoft did dramatic damage. N64 had a strong western following, but there were already signs of older gamers preferring the Sony brand toward the end of its life. With the release of PS2 Sony was on a role and it would have taken a truly dramatic showing from Nintendo to even be considered as an option no matter what it did. Things GCN did wrong: -A message of a "gaming machine" when others were pushing a "multi-media device". It's hard to grasp right now, but back in the day it was still somewhat new for adults to want to game. So calling something a media device/DVD player made it way easier to accept. Major fail on Nintendo's part. -Purple fisher-price look -Baby-sized discs -Weird versions of Mario and Zelda -Late launch -Loss of Rareware, Retro not able to replace. So yeah, they went off the rails entirely there. But even if you correct all that stuff, they still had to contend with the fact that Sony had Final Fantasy and GTA as exclusives. That's an impossible hill to climb. You're talking the biggest western title and the biggest eastern. Nintendo would have had to not only correct GCN's flaws, but also go beyond and get aggressive and made some decisions with foresight. What could have turned things around: -Secure Rockstar North as a 2nd party studio and endorse the production of GTA (haha) -Bought Bungie and had Halo as an exclusive/Goldeneye follow up. -Been aggressive and supported Square when it was bleeding money in 2000, and brought the FF brand back to Nintendo exclusively. Those things COULD have made GCN a worthy PS2 challenger, but let's be honest. They were on the exact opposite of Nintendo's actions at the time. |
They didn't have to beat Sony that generation, Sony still could have won running away.
What Nintendo absolutely DID have to do is get the heads up on Microsoft and beat MS badly enough to maintain a solid no.2 spot. I think that was doable.
Even with other mistakes, just launching a year earlier with Zelda: Majora's Mask and Perfect Dark instead would've effectively sealed the XBox's fate, it would be too late and far behind not just one, but two consoles for developers to seriously get it behind it (this is the same problem NX is now going to face if it tries to engage PS4/XBO directly, or how Atari Jaguar/3DO couldn't do anything against SNES/Genesis).
Nintendo also likely could've capitalized on some of Sony's own mistakes, namely making a very hard to develop for system. In the first year this could've been a difference maker, but since Nintendo gave Sony an 18-month headstart that gave Sony such a huge lead that all 3rd parties basically fell in line and were forced to support the PS2. So basically all the effort to make the GCN easy to develop for was all for nothing because they just let the system sit on a shelf for an entire year because software was not ready (piss poor planning).
Nintendo got Resident Evil away from Sony as it was, who knows what else they could've taken away had they actually launched closer to the PS2 and been somewhat competetive.
Plus if you move Majora's Mask into the launch window as a GameCube game, you kinda take care of the toon shading problem Wind Waker presented too, because people would've gotten more of a traditional Zelda in the OoT style first (albiet Link is a kid through out MM) and then it wouldn't have been such a big deal with WW to do something different.
I think that gen would've ended more like this:
Playstation 2: 120 million, GameCube: 50 million, XBox: 10 million
Had Nintendo been smart and launched in 2000.
