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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Interesting Quote About the GameCube's Design

Farsala on 05 July 2015
RolStoppable said:

After so many years it's still shocking how willfully people buy into third party excuses. Third party support isn't about horsepower, ease of programming or even sales. It's first and foremost driven by bias.


I Have seen this from you multiple times, so I guess I got some statements and questions.

 

PS3 vvas hard to develop for but it had similar specs to 360 making certain games look the same an appealing thing. PS3 came off the back of PS2 success. And because of that vvould you not think that planning three years before the PS3 released to make games for it? VVii came off the sales flop Gamecube, so three years in advance they probably should not develop for the Gamecubes successor.

In addition the PS2 vvas still trucking along at this point in time. So games vvith similar control schemes (DS2, DS3, 360) could easily be made right?

PC games are also much closer to PS3 and 360 then the VVii.

Install base? 360 and PS3 alvvays ahead. PC+360+PS3?  Therefore ahead, but PC is not knovvn. And idk if any PS2 games after 2006 didnt come out on just PS2 and 360. So likely PS2 helped PS3.

And many multiplat games for vvii, ps3, 360 sold vvorst on vvii.

I mean PS2 gen obvious, PS2 takes off after major PS1 gen therefore; not much support for competitors.

PS3 gen then maybe 3rd parties expected the same? VVith 3 year dev cycles that gets the PS3 set til 2009.



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Zackasaurus-rex on 05 July 2015

Not counting the pre-PlayStation era, the Gamecube had the strongest third-party support of any Nintendo console... And that's despite being a commercial failure only topped by the Wii U. That approach definitely helped.

Despite that, though, it was still a pretty awful platform for third-party support.



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Scoobes on 05 July 2015
RolStoppable said:

If you truly believe that 360+PS3+PC>Wii justified the decisions of third parties, then you must raise an eyebrow why 3DS>>>Vita didn't lead to a similar result. Not to mention that third parties at large have found much more success on the 3DS than on the Vita.

Well... Mobile>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>3DS>>>Vita

Why bother with either when you can churn out a cheap companion game/app?




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rakugakist on 05 July 2015
NoirSon said:
Ruler said:

Not true at all multiple CDs werent a big deal at the time, PC games like Doom 3 even launched with multiple installatio  Discs much more than any gamecube game had


Multiple discs were not that big of a deal, but when you are developing multiplatform games and in one environment, everything can fit on one disc, while in another you have to split the game across at least two, which also adds to cost because the multiple mini discs (which were specially designed so that they couldn't be copied by pirates as easily as PS1 and Dreamcast discs were in the past) and the packaging to contain them isn't exactly free, you have to ask which would you as a publisher that wants to get the most money back without spending a lot as possible work on.

The GC mini discs were the EXACT same problem the N64 had just with a different medium. By the time the Wii rolled around Nintendo had finally gotten to DVD type discs when everyone else went on to a higher standard with more room again. Combine that with lower specs, lack of online infrastructure and motion controls as the standard they burned a number of bridges, especially as PC style and Western developement started to come to the forefront.

The because the GC was more powerful then the PS2, perhaps if it had gotten off to a better lead it might have done better, but the rise and fall of the Wii and the middle tier of Japanese development in general shows that the industry was going one way and Nintendo was unlikely to make that change at a quick enough pace that they still wouldn't have seen the same problems we see them facing now. The problem isn't the GC design principal of trying to make it 3rd party friendly, ALL consoles should have such a design principal, the problem is that Nintendo went about it in one way design wise of the console and in another factor did something that made it harder for developers to make titles on multiple systems.

Heck one can say that SINCE the N64, Nintendo has always made home console devices where the storage medium and the main controller have made it more difficult for multiplatform games to be made.


What?  Seriously? Capitalizing exact. Really?



Soundwave on 05 July 2015

The GameCube did have significant third party support though. It basically had all the Western developer support and some fairly large Japanese exclusives/premiere titles too. This is part of the reason why the GameCube has such a large hardware to software shipped ratio ... there were so many third party games for it.

The only Nintendo consoles that didn't have good third party support are the N64, Wii (relative to the others), and Wii U.

The N64 crippled itself with the cartridges and the Wii/Wii U are a full generation behind the systems they're competing against.



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oniyide on 05 July 2015
padib said:
Shadow1980 said:

 

I partially agree with your top points, but as for home console vs handheld, I don't agree that it's apples to oranges.

Rol is absolutely right. If the PS brand is king in home consoles, Nintendo is king on handhelds right now. There is overwhelming support for the PS brand, as proven by Rol's point on the PS3 being supported by 3rd parties. That assumption is never possible on a Nintendo home console, 3rd parties will dump it immediately if it struggles.

The question is though, why is this bias a reality? If people are treating another person kindly and me unfairly, I need to ask myself the question: "are they being unfair really, or am I just hard to deal with?" I think the same should be asked about Nintendo. When they are winning, 3rd parties are reluctant to participate with them (high Vita support), when they are losing 3rd parties will not lift a finger (GC, WiiU). So the question is, what has Sony done to win the trust of 3rd parties to the point where they are willing to lose money for Soney to keep the PS brand alive, and what has Nintendo done to lose that trust.

I don't think it's a question we can answer in this thread, but I think it's the eventual progression of this train of thought.

Sure we can, people just want to ignore it. From the jump Sony was a pleasure for 3rd parties to work with or at least MUCH easier to work with than Nintendo as evidenced by there treatment of 3rd parties in the NES/SNES era and to a lesser extent the N64 where they flat out refuse to listen to them. Sony listens, for the most part. 

Sony has proven themselves Ninty...meh. Even when SOny was floundering they opened to 3rd parties and asked how they could make it better, see they WORKED with those guys even sent some devs when a game wasnt working properly, something that Ninty wont do. So yes there is your answer its quite simple. Sony and MS are willing to put in the work where Nintendo isnt. But people will ignore that because it will put Ninty in a negative light



oniyide on 11 July 2015
padib said:
oniyide said:

Sure we can, people just want to ignore it. From the jump Sony was a pleasure for 3rd parties to work with or at least MUCH easier to work with than Nintendo as evidenced by there treatment of 3rd parties in the NES/SNES era and to a lesser extent the N64 where they flat out refuse to listen to them. Sony listens, for the most part. 

Sony has proven themselves Ninty...meh. Even when SOny was floundering they opened to 3rd parties and asked how they could make it better, see they WORKED with those guys even sent some devs when a game wasnt working properly, something that Ninty wont do. So yes there is your answer its quite simple. Sony and MS are willing to put in the work where Nintendo isnt. But people will ignore that because it will put Ninty in a negative light

Are you able to post without the bolds? They're not needed.

People can understand something if you express it reasonably. And I think that what you're saying it possible, I just think it sounds overly simplistic.

What do you do about the fact that, many times, there is a conflict of interest between Nintendo and 3rd parties? Examples such as the EA and Nintendo fallout on Origin. Though I agree that Nintendo can certainly improve their approach with 3rd parties, I think the issue is also much deeper than that. There is a lack of trust on all sides, not just something that is Nintendo's doing.

its been expressed time and time again for years now. There is nothing possible about it. Sony has worked more closely with 3rd parties than Ninty has, these are facts. And the biggest factor in why one company's product is getting more support than another. IMHO thats more reasonble than some conspiracy against Nintendo.

As for Origin, IMHO thats heresay and ive yet to see concrete proof, it doesnt even make that much sense, its not like the other two use Origin and they still get support (if im wrong, correct me). Why would EA use that as an excuse to not support Ninty when they can just not support Ninty? And even if that were true thats only one company, hardly indication of a pattern. 



asqarkabab on 11 July 2015

I hope the nx is like the gc to get thirdparty support again



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Alkibiádēs on 11 July 2015
Shadow1980 said:
RolStoppable said:

After so many years it's still shocking how willfully people buy into third party excuses. Third party support isn't about horsepower, ease of programming or even sales. It's first and foremost driven by bias.


You really think hardware design decisions had nothing to do with this? It's the only thing that makes sense. It's a problem that began with the N64. The N64 had the specs, but cartridges hurt it. An N64 cartridge cost something like $10-15 to manufacture vs. only one or two bucks for a CD, yet could hold only a fraction of the data. The biggest N64 cartridges had a capacity of 64MB, while a CD can hold up to 700MB. Indeed, the average PS1 game was much larger than the largest N64 game; FFVII, the game that tipped the scales in Sony's favor, weighed in at over 1.3GB, so big it needed more than one CD.

Actually N64 games were usually much bigger than PS1 games.

Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, Conker and Super Mario 64 are far bigger platformers than the Crash Bandicoot trilogy.

Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask are far bigger adventure games than anything on the PS1.

Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark obliterate any FPS games on the PS1.

Mario Kart 64 & Diddy Kong's Racing are around the similar size of Crash Team Racing.

Don't know about you guys but Final Fantasy VII looks like ass compared to Paper Mario visually speaking.

All that extra space on CD-ROMS went to silly looking FMVs and voice acting lol. Cringeworthy voice acting might I add. The FMVs worked wonders to convince people to buy the PS1 though, that can't be denied. Also the much cheaper option, something that also can't be denied.



"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" - Thoukydides

Dekunova on 11 July 2015

I think the Gamecube strategy is something Nintendo should look at in the next few year, at least when it comes to specs. Maybe a less goofy design (though goofy as it is I love that little purple box) and obviously don't cheap out like the mini-DVD, just give us a Blu-Ray disc playing Nintendo system.

The Gamecube's third party support wasn't the best, but it was a solid step in the right direction. I will point out that it's a bit unfair to talk sales in relation to that generation because it was pretty much "meh" for anything not named the "PS2". The Dreamcast crashed. The Gamecube declined, and even the original Xbox didn't sell all that greatly (not to mention it was much more expensive for Microsoft). Sony just had a huge grip of the industry that generation.