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Forums - Sales - Aricle: Xbox vs Gamecube. Looking back at the battle for 2nd place.

misterd on 08 December 2007
DarkNight_DS said:
Kyros said:
Darknight I think no one is arguing against cubes per se. Just purple ones with kiddie toy look. And the xbox was weird too. But yes third-party support was probably the biggest problem

Purple was an IN color when the cube came out. It wasn't considered kiddie. I can show you a ton of equipment I had the pleasure of working with when the cube was released and it was all purple. For some reason tech companies liked purple. I blame SGI mostly... Actually a lot of it was Purple and looked very much like the GameCube, just a few more thermal fins and blue lights. The Cube may look kiddie now, but in 2001 the design was what everyone was going after in the tech business.


In the tech business that may have been true, but Nintendo isn't pushing gear to the tech business. They're in the business of pushing consoles to the gaming market, which at the time in the US and EU (and is larely still today) males between the ages of 10-30 who saw a purple lunchpail as a reason to question one's sexual orientation. The perception then AND now remains that the GameCube was an underpowered system aimed at small children.

 

Now, if you put the color aside, I agree with everything you said. The hardware and proprietary disc format was a reason many felt Nintendo would be better able to compete last generation. Unfortunately, the color choice and other bad marketing decisions (Mario Sunshine's "Clean is better than dirty" commercial; swapping out a "realistic" Zelda for Celda) kept the Cube's numbers low. And I suspect the difficulty in pirating software may have hurt their market as well, as many markets are big on bootlegs. While this may hurt the developers, it also encourages console sales, and that's going to boost the overall market size for them.



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Avinash_Tyagi on 08 December 2007

Its true the cube wasn't ugly, but it was a transition console really, it wasn't different enough to standout, but different enough that it wasn't viewed as cool by the public, Wii has won because it reached new markets which weren't engaged in gaming, but you can see hints of this in the GCN games like Kirby air racer, the fact that the buttons on the GCN controller were designed to be different from one another and in some cases larger, the whole intent was to try and make gaming more accessible, but it didn't go far enough



 

Predictions:Sales of Wii Fit will surpass the combined sales of the Grand Theft Auto franchiseLifetime sales of Wii will surpass the combined sales of the entire Playstation family of consoles by 12/31/2015 Wii hardware sales will surpass the total hardware sales of the PS2 by 12/31/2010 Wii will have 50% marketshare or more by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  It was a little over 48% only)Wii will surpass 45 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  Nintendo Financials showed it fell slightly short of 45 million shipped by end of 2008)Wii will surpass 80 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2009 (I was wrong!! Wii didn't even get to 70 Million)

DarkNight_DS on 08 December 2007
misterd said:
DarkNight_DS said:
Kyros said:
Darknight I think no one is arguing against cubes per se. Just purple ones with kiddie toy look. And the xbox was weird too. But yes third-party support was probably the biggest problem

Purple was an IN color when the cube came out. It wasn't considered kiddie. I can show you a ton of equipment I had the pleasure of working with when the cube was released and it was all purple. For some reason tech companies liked purple. I blame SGI mostly... Actually a lot of it was Purple and looked very much like the GameCube, just a few more thermal fins and blue lights. The Cube may look kiddie now, but in 2001 the design was what everyone was going after in the tech business.


In the tech business that may have been true, but Nintendo isn't pushing gear to the tech business. They're in the business of pushing consoles to the gaming market, which at the time in the US and EU (and is larely still today) males between the ages of 10-30 who saw a purple lunchpail as a reason to question one's sexual orientation. The perception then AND now remains that the GameCube was an underpowered system aimed at small children.

 

Now, if you put the color aside, I agree with everything you said. The hardware and proprietary disc format was a reason many felt Nintendo would be better able to compete last generation. Unfortunately, the color choice and other bad marketing decisions (Mario Sunshine's "Clean is better than dirty" commercial; swapping out a "realistic" Zelda for Celda) kept the Cube's numbers low. And I suspect the difficulty in pirating software may have hurt their market as well, as many markets are big on bootlegs. While this may hurt the developers, it also encourages console sales, and that's going to boost the overall market size for them.


 How about this... the Cube lacked consistant game releases.  It was also a year too late to the party.  Plus Most users felt burned by the N64's slow releases.  I never once thought the cube was kiddy before I got it, I don't remember anyone my age saying it was kiddie (I'm 30 now).  People complained about it's release dates though and that I'd say was the worst thing about the cube.  Maybe kids said it looked kiddie ;)



Prepare for termination! It is the only logical thing to do, for I am only loyal to Megatron.

takeru51 on 09 December 2007

"3rd" not "3th"!!!!!!!!!! "3rd" not "3th"!!!!!!!!!!
I had to stop because that bothered me so much.



nintendo_fanboy on 09 December 2007
misterd said:
DarkNight_DS said:
Kyros said:
Darknight I think no one is arguing against cubes per se. Just purple ones with kiddie toy look. And the xbox was weird too. But yes third-party support was probably the biggest problem

Purple was an IN color when the cube came out. It wasn't considered kiddie. I can show you a ton of equipment I had the pleasure of working with when the cube was released and it was all purple. For some reason tech companies liked purple. I blame SGI mostly... Actually a lot of it was Purple and looked very much like the GameCube, just a few more thermal fins and blue lights. The Cube may look kiddie now, but in 2001 the design was what everyone was going after in the tech business.


In the tech business that may have been true, but Nintendo isn't pushing gear to the tech business. They're in the business of pushing consoles to the gaming market, which at the time in the US and EU (and is larely still today) males between the ages of 10-30 who saw a purple lunchpail as a reason to question one's sexual orientation. The perception then AND now remains that the GameCube was an underpowered system aimed at small children.

 

Now, if you put the color aside, I agree with everything you said. The hardware and proprietary disc format was a reason many felt Nintendo would be better able to compete last generation. Unfortunately, the color choice and other bad marketing decisions (Mario Sunshine's "Clean is better than dirty" commercial; swapping out a "realistic" Zelda for Celda) kept the Cube's numbers low. And I suspect the difficulty in pirating software may have hurt their market as well, as many markets are big on bootlegs. While this may hurt the developers, it also encourages console sales, and that's going to boost the overall market size for them.


There were some problems with the Cube, but you definitely can't say it was underpowered. It was only a little worse than the XBox which cost way more and it was actually better than the PS2, so you just can't call it underpowered.



Currently Playing: Skies of Arcadia Legends (GC), Dragon Quest IV (DS)

Last Game beaten: The Rub Rabbits(DS)

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hunter_alien on 09 December 2007

Wow , nice little reading you made me :P If the GC would have had ported versions of GTA3 and GTA VC , and at least one major FF game , than there would have been no doubt that the GC could have pushed at least 28 million units ...



Vote the Mayor for Mayor!

endurance on 09 December 2007

good read man,i think it was the space of the disks that also was a big problem for GC



endurance on 09 December 2007
misterd said:

Thanks for the article. Though some facts and dates (ok, technically dates ARE facts) are a little out of line but the overall insight seems sound. The real question now is how the hell did Nintendo get back into 1st place? 


wii sports and wii-mote



DMeisterJ on 09 December 2007

Great Article, Great Read.



leo-j on 09 December 2007
RolStoppable said:
nintendo_fanboy said:
misterd said:

In the tech business that may have been true, but Nintendo isn't pushing gear to the tech business. They're in the business of pushing consoles to the gaming market, which at the time in the US and EU (and is larely still today) males between the ages of 10-30 who saw a purple lunchpail as a reason to question one's sexual orientation. The perception then AND now remains that the GameCube was an underpowered system aimed at small children.

 

Now, if you put the color aside, I agree with everything you said. The hardware and proprietary disc format was a reason many felt Nintendo would be better able to compete last generation. Unfortunately, the color choice and other bad marketing decisions (Mario Sunshine's "Clean is better than dirty" commercial; swapping out a "realistic" Zelda for Celda) kept the Cube's numbers low. And I suspect the difficulty in pirating software may have hurt their market as well, as many markets are big on bootlegs. While this may hurt the developers, it also encourages console sales, and that's going to boost the overall market size for them.


There were some problems with the Cube, but you definitely can't say it was underpowered. It was only a little worse than the XBox which cost way more and it was actually better than the PS2, so you just can't call it underpowered.

He was talking about the perception. He is right, people are stupid.

http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/932984.asp

 



 

mM