Soundwave said:
Yeah I agree. Give the GameCube Halo 1 & 2 exclusive (with online play) may well take the GameCube from 22 million to well over 30 million. There would be a spin-off effect where that audience would in turn by other games and that grows everything. Like Halo 2 sold 4.1 million copies in North America in 2004 alone (so like six weeks worth of sales), that wasn't that far off from GTA: San Andreas (5.1 million) on the PS2's larger userbase. The XBox was even outselling the PS2 here and there for monthly periods by 2003/2004 in the US, MS just decided to pull the plug on the hardware because of a dumb hardware deals they had made with Nvidia that meant the chip was costing them huge losses and pivoted to the XBox 360 (moving to AMD). In a hypothetical timeline with a Delorean time machine, having the benefit of hindsight, I'd telling Nintendo and Microsoft of that time to do basically this: - You're both going to get your ass kicked by PS2. In your case Microsoft, the XBox division is going to largely just be a money-losing pit for decades and you still won't ever beat Sony in the long run. The XBox hardware is also going to have a bunch of poor things about it and cause you to have to cut bait anyway. - So to Microsoft, you're better off just being a partner to Nintendo and throwing your money and influence to stake them in this high stakes poker game. In exchange I guess Nintendo could give MS the token nod of using Windows like the Dreamcast did. - To Nintendo: stop being fucking stupid with a lot of your weird hardware decisions. Take some notes from MS' XBox plans. No purple lunchbox design. Black and silver are the launch colors and the design is tweaked to look a lot cooler. RAM is bumped to 48MB main RAM, a modem is included for an online service. Full size discs, DVD playback is enabled by a seperate remote accessory. - That Wind Waker Zelda design ... not happening. Not at first. First you make Twilight Princess, then you can go make Wind Waker as the second console Zelda. Zelda is too important to have its sales potential crippled like that. Said joint platform (GameCube X lets say) should have titles like Halo 1/2, Zelda: Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime 1/2, Resident Evil 4, RE Remake, Super Mario Sunshine, Mario Kart: Double Dash, Eternal Darkness, Forza, Super Smash Bros Melee, Elder Scrolls III, Fable, Star Wars KOTOR, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron II/III, Zelda: Wind Waker (later), Animal Crossing, Ninja Gaiden Black, Dead or Alive 3, MGS2: Substinence port, GTA San Andreas port, Tales of Symphonia, Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, MGS: Twin Snakes, etc. etc.
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And Perfect Dark, and other Rare games like Banjo Kazooie, Conker, Kameo: Elements of Power, Grabbed by the Ghoulies and so on.
All of those games were mediocre and forgettable at best, but under Nintendo's watch and dime, I'm confident that we would have gotten much better output from Rare.
That being said, I think there are a number of Xbox exclusives that wouldn't have existed if Nintendo is pushing the button: I remember DOA3 and Ninja Gaiden Black coming out at a time when Nintendo was firmly in its, "We don't need to make deals for exclusive T/M-rated games, we're a family company!" mindset. Resident Evil 4 wasn't actually an exclusivity deal; Mikami wanted it for the GCN because of the easier programming environment and even said that it wouldn't be ported elsewhere (lol).
