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1) I'm not complaining about them not releasing their games on the platforms I own.
Just to interject something here, I wanted to clarify what it is that
I disliked about Acclaim dropping their GameCube support.
IIRC, there was
hard data that said that Acclaim games sell poorly on the GameCube, even beyond the difference in the userbase levels of the GCN compared to the PS2 or XBox, or the sales proportions seen by other companies making multiplatform games.
But, if you took a closer look at the data, you would see that effect as being
directly proportional to the "suckyness" of the games that Acclaim was putting out. Nintendo fans are picky. Perhaps even spoiled. Some of the best games in the world are only on Nintendo consoles, and there's a large slice of the userbase that expects that. And it's not really a "partisan" thing (since I think a lot of those people are probably multiconsole owners).
IMO, the GameCube can't be held to blame for that. I think it's actually a good thing. But, if Acclaim wants to "play it safe" and release games to a less-critical audience, so be it. If they were to slow down/stop making games for the GameCube, I probably wouldn't even had noticed. (Although just about anyone could've told tham that it's an unpredictably bad idea to release yet-another mediocre game into the flood of mediocre games already available on the PS2.)
But that's not what Acclaim did. They
announced that they were ending their support for the GameCube. Why? Were they
trying to make the GameCube look bad? Nope. They needed a scapegoat. They needed someone to blame for the poor sales of their sucky games. But the strategy didn't help them any. Because their bad games cost them money on every platform, not just the GameCube.
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2) My argument has been primarily that we shouldn't cheer the death of videogame companies.
I'm basically with you on this one, I just didn't see the need to counter anyone's opinions about it. I'm sorry Acclaim is gone, but they really should've seen it coming. Just about everyone else saw it coming. A few people saying "You're next, Eidos" won't mean the life or death of Eidos, but hopefully it might be a bit of a wake-up call for them, and help them avoid Acclaim's fate (which shouldn't be too hard).