As all of you know, the PS2, the second 6th generation homeconsole to be released, took the record of best selling homeconsole to date!... When released, it competed with the Dreamcast which, after a year on the market, died a painfull death.

About a year later came the Gamecube. It had to bring Nintendo back on top after the N64's unexpected loss against the PSX. Announced at Space World 2000, the hype was at an alltime high at that time, releasing with an asstounding 300k in Japan first week!

But there was another contender on the horizon. Microsoft decided to build their own homeconsole after the Dreamcast failed. They had supported the dreamcast with Windows OS and online capabilities to try and stop Sony from becoming too big and enter their own monopoly market. When their first homeconsole was announced it got support from every major 3th party publisher except EA. This was worrying, for the Dreamcast didn't have their support either and everyone knows what happened to them! It was until December 2000 that the Xbox got EA's support.

Microsoft, trying to get a firm grip on the homeconsole market, purchased Bungie and Rare (51% of the shares from Nintendo for an estimated 425 million $). And got a deal with Sega to bring out Panzer Dragoon Orta, Crazy Taxi 3, Jet set radio Future and Sega GT exclusively on Xbox.

The Xbox had a moddest start but didn't sell through the roof the first 6-12 months thanks to the clumsy design and the big controller. However, a launchgame called Halo would eventually seal the deal by engraving the Xbox's name in history.

The Gamecube (codenamed Dolphin) got of to a hell of a nice start. With games like Star Wars Rogue Squadron II, Super Monkey Ball 1 and Luigi's Mansion right out of the box. The announcements of a 3D Metroid and a new Wave Racer made a lot of people purchase the sytem right when it came out. All was well for the Gamecube. the 3th party developers that had walked away from the N64 came right back to Nintendo and developers like Capcom made lucrative deal with Nintendo to bring out loads of exclusive titles for their newest itteration. Games like Resident evil 0 and 4, Viewtiful Joe, Killer 7 and PNO3 were announced. On top of that came Metal Gear solid II: The twin Snakes, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's requim and Super smash bros: Melee.

But the shadows remained. The PS2, that had been released ~1 year earlier had put a great gap between the numbers 2 and 3 (Gamecube and Xbox in respective order) And by the holiday season of 2002 it was obvious the gap couldn't be bridged. With games like Metal Gear solid, GT and Devil may cry 2 the PS2 propelled it's way to heaven leaving the battle for the 2nd place left.

The Gamecube seemed to have the 2nd place firmly in grip because the Japanese seemed to avoid the Xbox. But sales started to slow down in Europe and The United States. Games like Metroid Prime 2 didn't sell nearly as well as their former itterations had and 3th parties got worried. Nintendo lowered the price to 100$ but it didn't make a big difference because it didn't have DVD options and the discs stopped people from frauding with the games. The first 4 months after the pricecut saw an increase of 200-300% from former sales but after 4 months, this increase had declined to almost 0%. Being back at former levels, even when new High-profile games like Zelda: The Windwaker were released in combination with low 3th party sales on the system resulted in a decline of support for Nintendo's lunchbox whilst the same games on the Xbox saw sales that could (in some form) compete with the PS2's. This is because Nintendo's games are the best on Nintendo's system and as such. People tend to buy those earlier leaving the 3th parties with lower sales than on the PS2 or the Xbox.

After some slow and painfull months for the Gamecube Halo 2 got released for the Xbox and GTA: San Andreas for the PS2 and the Xbox saw it's chance to surpass the Gamecube's Worldwide sales. Halo 2 went on to sell more then 8 million copies worldwide on a system with a userbase of ~25 million, which is abnormally high that late in a consoles lifecycle. The temporary PS2 exclusive GTA San Andreas got ported to Xbox 6 months after it's innitial release but the Gamecube got overlooked. After that the Xbox had the 2nd place firmly in grip. Games like Resident evil 4 (2005 GoTY), Baten Kaitos, Tales of Symphonia and Geist coulnd't bring Nintendo's cube back in 2nd place due to stalled sales in Japan (it got stuck at 3.8 million and has eventually climbed to 4.1 in 2007).

2005 came and the Xbox 360 was released. Microsoft dropped the Xbox as a bomb and Nintendo's chance to take the 2nd spot in the 6th generation was still still there whilst Microsoft had opened the contest for the 7th gen. The swansong for the Gamecube, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess got pulled back to Q2 2006 and one of the last big 3th-party games for the Cube (Starcraft Ghost) got cancelled for the system. The game would eventually get cancelled across all systems but it for the time being it was planned as a Xbox and PS2 release. Leaving only Twilight Princess in combination with some B-games like Chibi Robo and Odama the PS2 had an open field of consumers to tap whilst the Xbox 360 had accesed the Hardcore market that was waiting for a stronger system.

The xbox's sales died but the Software was still running. Itterations of Madden and Fifa 2006 were still outselling the Gamecube's versions whilst the Xbox wasn't even available in stores and it didn't look like the Gamecube was ever going to take that 2nd spot back.

Then Zelda: Twilight Princess got annouced for Wii next to the Cube version and it was goodbye to the 2nd place for the 6th generation. Zelda Twilight Princess was however able to get the Gamecube's sales back to a level of 50-70k but the gap was too big. Xbox, as a newcomer, had taken the 2nd spot in t he 6th gen!

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Week ending 16th November 2006: 

1

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Nintendo

1

292,353

292,353

56,243 (-)

12,467,737

5

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Nintendo

2

214,863

507,216

73,749 (-)

12,541,486

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6th Generation contenders in respective order:

1) PS2: ~120 million and climbing.

2) Xbox: ~25 million.

3) Gamecube: ~23 million.

4) Dreamcast: ~11 million.

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Sales of 3th party developers on PS2, Xbox and Gamecube to give you an idea on how things were going 6th gen:

Total sales of Madden 2006:

PS2: 3.84 million.

Xbox: 1.44 million.

Gamecube: 0.42 million.

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Best selling game on every 6th generation platform:

PS2: Grand theft auto: San andreas / 14.88 million.

Xbox: Halo 2 / 8.41 million.

Gamecube: Tie: Mario Kart: Double Dash / 6.60 million & Super Smash bros: Brawl / 6.58 million

Dreamcast: Sonic adventure / 2.42 million.

Thankyou for reading my article, StarcraftManiac.

MiniDVD was burden to GC. (capacity: 1.5 GB.)

good read, but don't use madden as a gauge for how 3rd parties did on a system.

Also about xbox vs gamecube is that Microsoft had to take a hell of a lot of losses just to keep up with the gamecube. Not everyone can jump in and buy 2 big game companies like bungie and rare, then sell their system for massive losses.

GC also was behind the XBOX from the start in the US.

Xbox was always first in America due to some of the games cater more to that audience than Gamecube games did.

The Cube was the only Nintendo console that didn't innovate. It just followed the competition's approach of bigger/faster/better. Couple that with it's kiddie image, and the writing was on the wall. I was suprised when games like True Crime & SSX Tricky came out with "gimped" Gamecube versions, and nobody made any noise abouy it.

With the XBOX's image of being hardcore, and having the best version of multi-platform titles, I can admit Microsoft deserved to get 2nd place. Nintendo didn't bring their A game.

Overall, not too bad, but it misses a few important points. The article focuses only on the total number of units sold, ignoring any mention of financials or profitability. Keep in mind that the XBox always had the full backing of Microsoft's enormous resources; it was never supposed to turn a profit, and, well, it pretty much didn't. The XBox was sold at a loss from day 1, it had an unlimited marketing budget that eventually ran into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and Microsoft paid large sums of money to developers to get their games on their platform. In contrast, we all know that Nintendo managed to eke out a small profit every year despite the Gamecube's major struggles.

I'm not trying to offer that as an excuse; Nintendo made MANY serious mistakes in designing and advertising the Gamecube. They certainly should have been able to leverage their experience and brandname into better sales than the XBox. But any serious analysis of the sixth generation needs to give at least cursory mention to the financial side of things, because if Nintendo and Microsoft had been working with equal resources, the outcome almost certainly would have looked a lot different.

And really, the PS2 absolutely annihilated both systems (doing 5x the sales of both) so I'm not sure how much a 24m to 22m victory really means when the market leader sold 125m+!

One huge problem with your post:

The Xbox was in development before the Dreamcast even launched. MS started working on it in 98 or 99.

The GCN was a testbed for many of the concepts that came into fruition with the Wii and DS, there were attempts to try and simplify gaming with the GCN, make it more accessibleto the masses, but they were never to the degree than the Wii and DS have done, which is why I say the GCN was merely a gimped Wii

Nice post, but there are some things that I don't like. One is that Wave Race was a launch title in all regions if I remember correctly. I think Japan only had 3 games at launch, Luigi's Mansion, Monkey Ball and Wave Race.
Also, the order you mention games is not that great. You mention the 3D Metroid very early, then you mention Metroid 2, and only after this you mention the Wind Waker. This is not chronological... Also, Pikmin, Mario Sunshine and Mario Kart should be mentioned if you want a full picture of important games because Nintendo had high hopes on all three games.
What I would also write is that Nintendo really worked together with third-parties closer than ever, letting them develop games like F-Zero or Starfox for example.

I guess if we go into such details, things should be more detailed on the Xbox side too and it might be too much then, so these are not important complaints. What really should be improved is the chronology in the middle part which I mentioned.