that's your opinion. It's good to be a fan,but respect what other people are playing.

Well, for Soulcalibur that was actually said/gloated about by Sony.  Then karma kicked in and SC3 sold worse than the least selling version of SC2 (Xbox). lolz.

Tales, I dunno, probably. You'd think after Symphonia almost hit a million, they'd want to follow that up.  Burnout definitely wasn't though, I think Criterion just hates Nintendo.  Which is strange, since Burnout 1-2 sold better on GameCube than Xbox...

There's probably more examples (Capcom fighters come to mind, CVS2 sold significantly more on GC than Xbox), but the truth is 3rd parties generally did comparably on GC and Xbox, yet in 2003/2004 nearly all of them decided to drop one platform and continue on with the other...

Some theories that I've just thrown together (probably won't hold up under scrutiny, but, who knows)

 - Cheaper development costs, I don't know much about the Gamecube's hardware, or indeed the Xbox's, but what I do know is that there were a lot of PC/Xbox ports, implying that the hardware was very similar. PC architecture is well travelled, with a lot of knowledge, games could be produced at lower costs.

 - Less optimisation. Again, I don't know much about the hardware of the units, but it appeared (to me, atleast), that the Xbox was clearly the strongest hardware out there last generation (this is just based on looking at games on the consoles), this means that developers could get more out of the Xbox with less optimisation, this sort of ties in with the first point.

 - Greater developer relations: Microsoft was the new boy, and keen to build up developer relations, as such it wouldn't be moronic to assume that they offered greater financial incentives to publishers/developers than what Nintendo did/could afford.

 - Lower royalties per title - I don't know if this is necessarily true, but if it is, it'd definitely be enough of an incentive for publishers to consider the Xbox over the Gamecube.

 - Greater predictability of market. Typically speaking, the average Xbox user was a teenage American boy who loved shooters/sports games, it's far more difficult to pin point the typical demographic of a Gamecube user. Greater predictability/security encourages greater investment.

 - More up-front sales. Again, this is more down to demographics/stereotyping, but the typical Xbox gamer was more likely to pick up a title in its first month of release than the typical Gamecube player. Gamecube's slow-burning sales would mean that more sales would come at times when revenues per title are far lower.

 - The Gamecube discs. The Xbox used a standard DVD, I believe, which means it was far cheaper, thanks to economies of scale, to produce Xbox games per-unit, than Gamecube games. Of course, this only comes down to a couple of cents a unit, but that builds up over thousands and millions of units of sales.

 - Xbox Live. This prevented players from selling their old games, drying up the second hand market. Although this didn't effect the sales data we're looking at, it certainly would have suggested to publishers that there's a greater risk of losing sales to the second hand market on the Gamecube than the Xbox.

 - Xbox Live. The ability to sell content to their users after the game was sold was certainly a lucrati ve proposition to the publishers.

Some theories that I've just thrown together (probably won't hold up under scrutiny, but, who knows)

 - Cheaper development costs, I don't know much about the Gamecube's hardware, or indeed the Xbox's, but what I do know is that there were a lot of PC/Xbox ports, implying that the hardware was very similar. PC architecture is well travelled, with a lot of knowledge, games could be produced at lower costs. This is specially true. The Xbox used standard DirectX shaders, and a Pentium. The GC on the other hand used a different type of shaders (and the Wii has shown that 3rd party developers haven't mastered them yet) and a PowerPC. The Xbox WAS a PC.

 - Less optimisation. Again, I don't know much about the hardware of the units, but it appeared (to me, atleast), that the Xbox was clearly the strongest hardware out there last generation (this is just based on looking at games on the consoles), this means that developers could get more out of the Xbox with less optimisation, this sort of ties in with the first point. This is true too, even when the difference between XB and GC was not that big compared to the difference between PS2 and GC. But it became more apparent when you combine it with your first point.

 - Greater developer relations: Microsoft was the new boy, and keen to build up developer relations, as such it wouldn't be moronic to assume that they offered greater financial incentives to publishers/developers than what Nintendo did/could afford. This is MS, how could it be wrong?

 - Lower royalties per title - I don't know if this is necessarily true, but if it is, it'd definitely be enough of an incentive for publishers to consider the Xbox over the Gamecube. Probably, considering the above point.

 - Greater predictability of market. Typically speaking, the average Xbox user was a teenage American boy who loved shooters/sports games, it's far more difficult to pin point the typical demographic of a Gamecube user. Greater predictability/security encourages greater investment. True about the Xbox user, and we Nintendo fans are not easy to please... the problem is that 3rd party developers think that we ONLY want Nintendo stuff.

 - More up-front sales. Again, this is more down to demographics/stereotyping, but the typical Xbox gamer was more likely to pick up a title in its first month of release than the typical Gamecube player. Gamecube's slow-burning sales would mean that more sales would come at times when revenues per title are far lower. Well this is up to interpretation.

 - The Gamecube discs. The Xbox used a standard DVD, I believe, which means it was far cheaper, thanks to economies of scale, to produce Xbox games per-unit, than Gamecube games. Of course, this only comes down to a couple of cents a unit, but that builds up over thousands and millions of units of sales. Very true. Just like CD vs Cartridges back in the day, it was all about production costs and production speed. Propietary formats will have the lower hand.

 - Xbox Live. This prevented players from selling their old games, drying up the second hand market. Although this didn't effect the sales data we're looking at, it certainly would have suggested to publishers that there's a greater risk of losing sales to the second hand market on the Gamecube than the Xbox. This might as well be true.

 - Xbox Live. The ability to sell content to their users after the game was sold was certainly a lucrative proposition to the publishers.

Seece said: Something else I find funny for those that bang on about Japan still being relevent for HW sales, 360 has sold more HW in the US than the big 3 combined in Japan.

Let's be real, Japan is one small country compare to North America.

BoneArk said: Seece said: Something else I find funny for those that bang on about Japan still being relevent for HW sales, 360 has sold more HW in the US than the big 3 combined in Japan. Let's be real, Japan is one small country compare to North America.

Yeah I just find it amusing when people tout the need for support in Japan to win a gen.