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Nintendo Gaming / RE:Gamecube four years on: Dissapointments
« on: November 17, 2005, 09:00:41 AM »
Nintendo failed to gain mindshare. Marketing is not just the commercials you see, it is promotions which attract the market a vendor is after. You couldn’t turn on a women’s volleyball tournament without seeing an Xbox banner. Likewise “X-Game” type events. Now, Nintendo says it’s not going for the core gamer/young male market, but these folks sure seem to buy a lot of games. Yes, in a sense it is unfair to compete with a company will to dump millions (Billions?) into building a business at a great loss, but that’s who they’re competing against whether they say so or not.
Nintendo needs to make deals with EB Games/Target/Best Buy to guaranty – for a price no doubt – product space devoted to their products. Likewise, I don’t care if N’s got to send strippers to Lucas Arts to give out free hummers, Nintendo needs to get Star Wars / large mindshare games on its next console. Lego Star Wars is a great example – the Gamecube gets it, with no bonus features, 9 months later than PS2 and Xbox. When the Nintendo console misses out on best selling games on other consoles (GTA/Star Wars), it really marginalizes its products. If they need to pay for these products they should do so. I don’t care if the games suck, they are the games many, many gamers want to play. It is a chicken egg thing. But I think paying for product development will build more unit sales to defray the cost of the bribe, thus increasing Nintendo’s profits for its own software because of hardware sales.
It looks like Nintendo’s heading for niche status, and it’s a shame. On the other hand if Xbox 1.5 (360) fails to sell well, Micro$oft could lose patience and decide it can’t make money in this industry, and pull the plug. I’ve been in two different game stores running 360 demo games, and have heard at least 4-5 people say it looks the same as the original Xbox. I question whether this will happen though, because the Xbox platform looks like a way to get a Micro$oft “on demand” box next to your TV.
Hopefully, N will learn some lessons from this generation. Hope they read these boards! LOL.
Nintendo needs to make deals with EB Games/Target/Best Buy to guaranty – for a price no doubt – product space devoted to their products. Likewise, I don’t care if N’s got to send strippers to Lucas Arts to give out free hummers, Nintendo needs to get Star Wars / large mindshare games on its next console. Lego Star Wars is a great example – the Gamecube gets it, with no bonus features, 9 months later than PS2 and Xbox. When the Nintendo console misses out on best selling games on other consoles (GTA/Star Wars), it really marginalizes its products. If they need to pay for these products they should do so. I don’t care if the games suck, they are the games many, many gamers want to play. It is a chicken egg thing. But I think paying for product development will build more unit sales to defray the cost of the bribe, thus increasing Nintendo’s profits for its own software because of hardware sales.
It looks like Nintendo’s heading for niche status, and it’s a shame. On the other hand if Xbox 1.5 (360) fails to sell well, Micro$oft could lose patience and decide it can’t make money in this industry, and pull the plug. I’ve been in two different game stores running 360 demo games, and have heard at least 4-5 people say it looks the same as the original Xbox. I question whether this will happen though, because the Xbox platform looks like a way to get a Micro$oft “on demand” box next to your TV.
Hopefully, N will learn some lessons from this generation. Hope they read these boards! LOL.
