US, January 14, 2004 - Nintendo's vice president of corporate affairs recently returned from time off with her newborn daughter and updated us on GameCube sales in the US, some developments for 2004 and more. She also used her powerful Jedi mind tricks to make us believe she was giving us new information on the future when in fact she was merely dodging our questions. Following that interview:

IGNcube: So tell us, why is everyone at Nintendo so happy?

Perrin Kaplan: Well, number-one we did incredibly well in 2003 on both of our hardware systems. In fact, we basically won 2003 and moved ourselves to the number two spot and Microsoft's Xbox to number three.

IGNcube: And this is in the US or is this worldwide?

Perrin: In the US.

IGNcube: That's excellent news. Congratulations. So let's go over this from the beginning. How were December GameCube sales?

Perrin: Year-on-year we were up 68.5% [in December] based on units sold. We sold about 1.1 million GameCubes in December. We did a little under half a million in December of last year by comparison. For the whole year we were up 35%. Our competitors were both in the negative.

IGNcube: Wow, that's fantastic news.

Perrin: It's really good.

IGNcube: How about GameCube life-to-date sales in the US?

Perrin: We're at 6.8 million GameCubes sold in the US life-to-date and we sold about 3.17 million of those this year.

IGNcube: Excellent. That's in the US though. What about global sales?

Perrin: On global sales, I don't know if you saw but Iwata made a comment to Reuters that our global holiday sales were up 70% year-on-year.

IGNcube: What does that equate to exactly, do you have a figure?

Perrin: I don't have specific global sales but I do know that during the holiday all markets were up, which I have to say has not always been the case.

IGNcube: How many units of Mario Kart: Double Dash!! have you sold in the US so far?

Perrin: Mario Kart is a little over a million units sold in seven weeks, which makes it the fastest-selling GameCube game.

IGNcube: So it's going to finally dethrone Super Smash Bros. Melee, huh?

Perrin: Yep. Yep.

IGNcube: What about GameCube software sales for the year in the US?

Perrin: GameCube software sales for the year were up 53% over 2002 and for the December period in particular they were up 41%.

IGNcube: Microsoft reps said that sales of Xbox beat out GameCube during the last two weeks of December. What is your response?

Perrin: Probably two things. First, I'm not sure if that period is relevant when we have already won the year. And second, because we were selling so much so fast we have seen some retail outlets start to have dry shelves and that's probably why that happened.

IGNcube: Do you have any indication that GameCube sales have been sustained in January?

Perrin: You know, I would say not as heavily because we don't have as much product in the pipeline so we're trying to move it. We just plain started having some retailers run out of stuff.

IGNcube: All right. So you're saying that GameCube is now definitely number-two sales-wise here in the US, beating Xbox.

Perrin: Right.

http://au.cube.ign.com/articles/463/463155p1.html

So the year was 2003 and GameCube made what seemed to be a huge comeback after it's major price cut with the PS2 and XBOX both being down YoY. We need to calm down with the whole PS3 sales rise and get back to reality. Yes it's been an impressive few weeks but it's just a blip when you look at the big picture. Wait until next year to see how it's fairing overall.

How many consoles did the Gamecube sell in 3 weeks during the pricecut?

You should make more threads...Interviews like this are quite enjoyable.

@puffy

That all fine & dandy

but we are talking worldwide here

I can do the same & only talk about japan:

Tell me the last time a 3rd place console managed to almost outsell the first place console in Japan (in fact at this rate PS3 may outsell wii in Japan for this years salesonly)?

@ darth:

IGNcube: Excellent. That's in the US though. What about global sales?

Perrin: On global sales, I don't know if you saw but Iwata made a comment to Reuters that our global holiday sales were up 70% year-on-year.

A fluke, i would say, in the long-run. Sony managed to condense it's greatest strengths in Japan into the single year (except for GT5, unfortunately for them), but they got the slim-line model, mass-market price-cut, and FF all at once, and in a year of particular weakness for Nintendo. The volatility of the Japanese market (strong, short-term responses to anything), and Sony's ability to keep those short-term bounces coming across the year was what sorted it out. Nintendo dropped the ball, and its definitely worthy to give credit to Sony for understanding that the Japanese console market is largely driven by these flash-in-the-pan flavor-of-the-month sort of things, but one must also recognize that it's as much about Nintendo's failure as Sony's success.

If the PS2 had ever heavily dropped the ball in Japan, certainly GameCube could have outsold them in one year. But it was a different world back then. PS2 was basically everyone's only option, whereas the battle for the big Japanese franchises is still quite live between Sony and Nintendo.

Will someone answer my question from my earlier post?

How many consoles did the GC sell after 3 weeks of the pricecut?

Same question as Carl

Not sure Carl, I'll say this much though, the GameCube was $199 before the cut while the PS3 was $399 before it had it's cut. The PS3 also had a redesign so whatever the figure is, the circumstances favour the PS3.

All I know sales wise are the percentages that you can read for yourself in the interview.. There is actually more to the interview than what I posted btw.

Thats great but YOY % can be misleading.

PS3 went up 300% & so on

For example.....PS3 was up YOY 100% weekly in 2008 in america compared to american 2007 sales.......for the first half of the year. But in RAW numbers it was merely up like 25K (it was in sub 30K's in 2007 & it was over 50K in 2008)

Unless we know raw figures.....we won't know the full story.

Did GC sell 500K then 306K then 250K after its price drop?