What was wrong with the Gamecube?

[Nature Boy]

I imagine some people did buy a Cube for RE4, it did sell well over a million copies in the space of a few months...

You get what I'm saying when I say "generally" though, right?

I'm not arguing nobody bought a Gamecube for RE4 (or any other 3rd party title), because that would pretty obviously be wrong.

By saying generally I'm just arguing it would be more than say half of the 21 million GC owners who fall into the "1st Party Nintendo interest" category.

(FYI (and FWIW), according to Wikipedia, there were 320,000 copies of RE4 sold on the Gamecube in the first 20 days, and they ended up around 1.5 million in total on the Cube. Even if all 1.5 million owners of RE4 specifically bought a Gamecube to play it on, that leaves 19ish million other owners owning the system for another reason)

(EDIT: Look at the sales from list list http://www.listal.com/list/bestselling-gamecube-games. Obviously I can't claim these are 100% accurate, but they look reasonable. 9 of the top 10 are Nintendo published (with #9 being the first 3rd party game), and you don't see another 3rd party game until #13. A *lot* of Gamecube owners bought a *lot* of 1st party titles on the Cube).

[Aussie2B]

I just don't think RE4 is a very telling example because the GameCube came out in 2001 while RE4 came out in 2005. Had it come out earlier on, I think it would have moved boatloads of systems, but there's no way to ever know that. As it is, it came along so late that anybody that had any inclination to own a GameCube had probably already picked one up, indeed likely for a first-party game.

[Nature Boy]

I just don't think RE4 is a very telling example ...

Did you look at the sales numbers I linked to above? 16 of the top 20 were published by Nintendo. RE4 was one of the 4 non-Nintendo games (at #16) in the top 20. If they're not representative of someone wanting 3rd party stuff over Nintendo stuff, not much else *would* be.

And don't forget, again, that I said "generally favour first party titles" - which, in light of the sales numbers above, I feel comfortable about saying.

Maybe I'm being sensitive, but why do some have an issue with that? Personal preferences aside, it makes sense, doesn't it? My personal favourite game is Eternal Darkness, which sold for crap, but even it wasn't the reason I bought a Gamecube. It was to allow me to play the newest Zelda and Metroid games when they came out. Everything else was gravy (like the Rogue Squadron games and BG&E)

[Aussie2B]

Well, then I think you're getting into the demographics of the GameCube. RE4 is a Mature-rated game with people's heads popping like grapes. With a system that was so frequently bought for kids, I think it was inevitable that it wouldn't get quite the sales of the family-friendly Nintendo releases, which were bought BOTH by parents for kids and by the older gamers that would pick up RE4.

Also, if you noticed, almost all of the games above RE4 were released between 2001-2003. Fewer games to pick from, so those titles were more likely to be bought by everybody that had the system. By the time RE4 came out, there was a lot to pick from.

So sales aren't really evident of how much people "favor" a game. The gamers I know already had a GameCube before RE4 and bought plenty of first-party titles, but RE4 is still their favorite GameCube game and, had it been out earlier, it would've been a bigger reason for them to pick up the system than the other titles.

[Hep038]

Damn. Here in the U.S., DVD players were as low as $35 in 2002.

http://news.cnet.com/DVD-players-no-longer-go-it-alone/2100-1040_3-820169.html


Nice article on the cost of DVD players in 2002. Rewriting history indeed.

[j_factor]

http://news.cnet.com/DVD-players-no-longer-go-it-alone/2100-1040_3-820169.html


Nice article on the cost of DVD players in 2002. Rewriting history indeed.

It does say they're available for "less than $100", and that's the beginning of 2002. By the end of the year they were cheaper than that. I don't know that they were $35, but he's probably not that far off.

[Zing]

I bought a standard Pioneer DVD player, christmas 2001, for $200 in Ohio at Best Buy and that was a deal.

[j_factor]

What about when Sega was giving away free DVD players with the purchase of a Dreamcast? Were the free DVD players more expensive than the Dreamcast itself?

[Rob2600]

Damn. Here in the U.S., DVD players were as low as $35 in 2002.

http://news.cnet.com/DVD-players-no-longer-go-it-alone/2100-1040_3-820169.html

Nice article on the cost of DVD players in 2002. Rewriting history indeed.


It does say they're available for "less than $100", and that's the beginning of 2002. By the end of the year they were cheaper than that. I don't know that they were $35, but he's probably not that far off.

In late 2002, Radio Shack had progressive-scan DVD players stacked up in the middle of the store for $35 each. I bought one to use in the bedroom. I also bought a Polaroid DVD player around the same time for $50.

Two years prior in December 2000, I bought my JVC DVD player *on sale* for $200 (originally $300). So yeah, the price of DVD players fell dramatically during those 24 months.

[Ryudo]

Lack of 3rd party support and it's discs at 1.5GB was too small.
DC had 1.2GB and was also too small.

Tho that did not affect 360 this gen in the regard of failing but has great 3rd party

[BlastProcessing402]

I don't know how many people bought Gamecubes for RE4, but I bought mine for REmake.

Not that I wouldn't have eventually had to buy one anyway for Zelda, but at the time it was REmake I was most wanting.

[thegamezmaster]

Where I'm at, everyone wanted the PS2 because it played DVD's. But the people that bought Gamecubes still love them to this day, including me.

[Gameguy]

In late 2002, Radio Shack had progressive-scan DVD players stacked up in the middle of the store for $35 each. I bought one to use in the bedroom. I also bought a Polaroid DVD player around the same time for $50.

Two years prior in December 2000, I bought my JVC DVD player *on sale* for $200 (originally $300). So yeah, the price of DVD players fell dramatically during those 24 months.
Just post a scan of your receipt and we'll believe you. I can't imagine it would have been any good quality at that price.

[BydoEmpire]

I really liked the GameCube - it was a great console with tons of awesome games. I especially like the controllers, which are among the most comfortable ever. 3rd party support was actually pretty good - there were good versions of many big franchises. Lots of quirky and cool exclusives, though I think Nintendo's game quality started to decline a bit.

Two dings:
1) The first set of memory cards were really small - you didn't have enough space on a card to save a Madden franchise, for example, until larger cards came out later.
2) The smaller capacity discs meant games often had to cut corners (compress audio, etc).

Overall, though, I really liked the console.

[Robocop2]

I kind of regret not owning one back in the day. I almost bought one after pllaying Godzilla DAMM on my brother's. But then I found out the game was also on the Xbox with additional monsters and that along with the fact the Xbox had several other games I was really interested in really swung me over to Xbox land.

[RCM]

It has the second strongest lineup for a Nintendo console/handheld behind the GBA as far as my tastes go. There was nothing wrong with Gamecube, and it went on to receive much more success when it was re-branded as "Wii."

[WanganRunner]

I love my GCN, almost as much as the N64.

It was honestly a better console than the N64 was, with a considerably better library, but the N64 IMO had SM64 and OoT and so I have an emotional attachment.

The GCN was similar to the N64 in that it was really designed around Miyamoto's games with everything else as an afterthought (see: Controller). I like this, people who want to play tons of 3rd party stuff can buy a PS2 or an Xbox (I bought both). I feel like this makes the 1st party stuff better, as there's less compromise. When you play Super Mario Sunshine or Wind Waker, you can tell that the controller was *designed* for those titles, they weren't adapted to it.

It DID have decent 3rd party support but that is admittedly not why I bought one, and I've still yet to play RE4. I liked Viewtiful Joe and Eternal Darkness. I never played Tales of Symphonia, FF:CC, or Beyond Good and Evil (unfortunately, in all cases).

Pikmin was birthed on the GCN and, to date, has sort of died there (barring the Wii Compilation). This is a shame, being IMO the most underutilized Nintendo franchise and potentially it's most brilliant. There's huge potential with the concept and they've just sat on it. A big reason I bought a Wii was to play future Pikmin games, and they never materialized.

I'm also a huge sucker for Luigi's Mansion, having been wowed by the footage back before the console was released.



EDIT: I forgot to mention that from a hardware standpoint, the sheer geek factor on the GCN is enormous. The PS2/Xbox were big black boxes with generic black controllers. The GCN was DIFFERENT, i.e. the following:

- It comes in f**king ORANGE. Orange. Awesome. And it wasn't even called orange, it was called "Spice"! My console had a stripper name. I'm about that.

- There's a huge stretched keyboard controller (PSO). It looks absurd and so I love it. I also love the JogCon, so I'm just partial to bizarre shit.

- The Game Boy Player was a neato peripheral. As a kid of the 90's and the Genesis era, I'm a sucker for anything that combines with anything. It's like console Voltron.

- Tiny little discs. Little, Silver, Different. Like Nuprin only playable. The JPN game packaging was rad looking, so small with the cool cardboard sleeves.

- Panasonic Q. I never got around to buying one but how cool was it? Colder than a polar bear's toenails.

- GBA connection, i.e. Four Swords. Any excuse to buy more shit and connect it all together, right? I felt like Serial Experiments Lain with my GCN and four GBA's attached to it, wires everywhere.

- Wavebird. First it was called "Wavebird", I mean wtf right? Second, I had fun going across the street from my house and being able to control the game, with a friend on walkie talkie telling me when it finally stopped working as I walked farther.

- The dev gear looked cool. I geeked the first time I saw an NPDP. Not *quite* as monolithic and "2001 obelisk-like" as the PSTOOL, but still pretty sick.

[Aussie2B]

1) The first set of memory cards were really small - you didn't have enough space on a card to save a Madden franchise, for example, until larger cards came out later.

Was there a delay between the release of the system and the black memory card? I remember my fiance and I got our GameCube within a few months of launch, and we decided to skip straight to the larger capacity card. If there was a delay, it must've been pretty short.

[moycon]

I thought the game cube was kick ass. That said, I only played it for a few months. A few days after launch, I went into Kmart and the video game guy tried to talk me into buying a GC. I declined. I figured if they were trying to push them a few days after launch, the console must not be all that, plus I had bought a PS2 at launch. Needless to say, my first Gamecube was a used one purchased off eBay with like 24 games, for $250. (Yep it was well past it's prime) I had a lot of fun with it for months, but once the 360 launched, dropped it like a hot potato. Looking back, I never did play RE4, also, the controller didn't age well. (Not unlike the N64)