Reuters have delivered one of their verdicts on the GameCube. I'll let you decide on what you think about it....

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (Reuters) - At first glance, GameCube looks like a kid's lunch box, complete with handle and plastic cover of purple and gray. But Nintendo (news - web sites), Goliath of the hand-held electronic game business, is hoping its new high-powered 4.5-inch-high console unit will put the bite on Sony's PlayStation 2 (news - web sites) and Microsoft's Xbox (news - web sites).

After sampling a few games on GameCube, it's clear that the product is going to be a worthy contender during this holiday season and beyond. But along with its nice features, The Cube has some serious limitations.

Not surprisingly, the graphics are great, a huge improvement over Nintendo 64. But is it better than PlayStation 2? Not appreciably. On rare occasions, the scenery in some PS-2 games shimmers inappropriately. You can see the same shimmering with some GameCube graphics.

GameCube's big advantage is price: $200 compared to $300 for Xbox and PlayStation 2. (At $50 each, the software will cost the same as PS-2 and Xbox titles.) GameCube is also more compact than the other systems, measuring about six inches by six inches by 4.5 inches.

There are a few notable drawbacks. Although GameCube looks large enough to handle standard 4.5-inch CDs, it's not. Instead, the games fit on bite-sized 3-inch-wide DVD disks unique to the system. That means you can't play CDs and you can't play movies, as you can on PS-2 or Xbox

So much for versatility.

The handle is simply odd. How many people are going to cart GameCube around with them? Nintendo also made the seemingly-pointless decision to design GameCube so a GameBoy Advance unit can be used as one of the controllers. The GameCube controller has a nifty design and the GameBoy Advance controls are nothing to brag about. Given what you'd spend for an adapter (which is not yet available), it's probably worthwhile to simply invest $35 to buy an extra controller.

But the secret to winning this three-way console war is going to be the software, not the hardware.

On this battlefield, the raw numbers suggest that GameCube is at a disadvantage. Nintendo is only promising to have seven titles available at launch, with only about a dozen in stores by month's end. Microsoft, in contrast, says at least 15 games will be on the shelves for its Nov. 15 release and another 14 or so should be available by Nov. 30. (To put this in perspective, the PS-2 has 38 titles being released this month, with more than twice as many already on the shelves.)

The low number of GameCube games seems surprising when Nintendo has bragged about the relative ease of designing GameCube software.

On the other hand, the company that gave us Mario, Donkey Kong and Zelda has a history of creating must-have titles that are married to its gaming systems, particularly titles that appeal to younger children. If the new Nintendo title ``Luigi's Mansion'' is typical of what players can expect from GameCube, it might give the other consoles a run for their money.

``Luigi's Mansion'' is a delight, a three-dimension Mario Brothers title with superior graphics and a spry sense of fun. At the beginning of the game, Luigi has won a mansion in a contest he doesn't remember entering. When he arrives, he discovers that the place is filled with ghosts. Before they can attack him, he's saved by an odd Japanese scientist with big glasses, a single tooth, and a huge tuft of hair. He equips Luigi with the Poltergust 3000, a vacuum cleaner that sucks up ghosts.

Watching Luigi tiptoe around the mansion, tremble whenever a ghost is near, and run like he's got a diaper that needs changing is a hoot. Even the process of collecting the ghosts with the Poltergust is like watching good slapstick.

As glorious as the graphics are, ``Luigi's Mansion'' has its own design flaws. Collecting the ghosts can be tricky and, unfortunately, the tutorial isn't very instructive, filled with too much talk and too little opportunity to practice. Also, there was one point in the game where I had to push several buttons almost simultaneously, all on the right side of the controller. The result is some weird contortions that seem out of place when Nintendo is bragging about the ergonomic ease of the controller.

Other titles being released at the same time as the debut include the jet ski racing game ``Wave Race: Blue Storm,'' ''Batman Vengeance,'' ``All-Star Baseball 2002,'' ``Disney's Tarzan Untamed,'' ``NHL Hitz 2002,'' and ``Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX2.''

The biggest question in the first phase of the console war: will there be enough machines to go around?

Nintendo says it will have 700,000 GameCube units on store shelves on Sunday, Nov. 18 when the system debuts, with another 400,000 units promised by Christmas. Microsoft, which begins selling Xbox on Thursday, Nov. 15, won't say how many units it has ready, although the company is promising that 1.2 million to 1.5 million will be available by Dec. 25.

Last year, the PS-2 was the gift everybody wanted and nobody could get. If Nintendo and Microsoft face similar shortages this season, the big winner could be the PS-2, as desperate parents search for an acceptable substitute.