the XBox.... AND the PS2
Quote:It's been a tough old few weeks for Nintendo of Europe, with the Dixons group announcing it is to stop selling GameCube hardware and problems with other stockists regarding its network adaptors. But the release of the stunning Metroid Prime and the crazy price slash-o-rama in operation by certain retailers has ensured GameCube has achieved that most rare of doubles for the company: biggest selling hardware of the week with the number one selling title across all-formats.
PS2 has consistently soared ahead of the competition for months on end, but thanks to massive, apparently irresistible GameCube bundles from chains like Argos and Dixons, GameCube has managed to outsell Sony's gaming behemoth. For the week ending March 22, GameCube saw a rise in sales of over 60 percent, while PS2, GBA and Xbox all dropped by between 10 and 15 percent.
Furthermore, the GameCube-exclusive Metroid Prime has shot straight to the top of the UK all-formats chart, compiled by ChartTrack, beating off stiff competition from huge multiformat franchises like The Sims and Rayman.
Argos, with it's terrific offer of a GameCube plus game and memory card for £79.98 is thought to have played a large part in this increase, and a spokesperson told us: "We're delighted by the response of our customers."
But it is Nintendo itself that will be sporting the broadest smile this week, with head of European PR Shelly Friend telling us: "We've had a great week - GameCube sold around 14,000 units in the UK and on top of that Metroid Prime launched at number one in the all-formats charts. Now we're just looking forward to the launch of GBA SP which we expect to be a great success."
Whether GameCube maintains this performance is clearly open to question, but right now the European arm of the company has every reason to feel buoyant, with the eagerly anticipated launch of GBA SP this Friday likely to provide a further boost.
Source
Price drop, a bundle, and Metroid was released, also. Good to see, even if it will drop back down again soon.
Woah, update!
Quote:Update: Argos to Continue Carrying GameCubes
By James Brightman -- Staff Writer
Published 5:10 PM CST March 24, 2003
The UK store has confirmed that it will keep GameCubes on its shelves...
First it was UK retailer, Dixons. They said that they they would no longer carry the GameCube after their last bit of inventory sells out. Then they retracted that statement a bit by saying that "it depends." Next, another large retailer in the UK, Comet, announced its own liquidation plans for Nintendo's console. In what seemed like a domino effect, Argos was to follow.
However, as soon as Argos slashed the price of the GameCube to £78.99 (including a free game and memory card) last week, they saw sales of the hardware jump from an average of around 100 units a day to a stunning 5000 units last Saturday. As a result of the massive sales increase, the retailer has confirmed that it will continue to stock Nintendo's system.
"The demand has been unbelievable," said Argos marketing director Paul Geddes. "We've struggled to keep up and cleared out most of our overstock. It's been an unbelievable increase in demand."
So that's one UK retailer back on Nintendo's side. As it stands now, Dixons is still undecided. Perhaps this will influence them to keep the GameCube as well.
We'll keep you posted.
At least things are looking up!
Well with GCN's best games being released at a snail's pace in England, it's not surprising that sales would do badly until an actual GAME came out for the system. I bet that's probably the 3rd GCN game released there :D. Wind Waker will be out 3 years from now there...
I never understood why a country that speaks the same language as the US (well pretty close) has to wait SO long. Shouldn't stuff like converting US/Japanese TV format to PAL format be getting done by the system itself? It's really pretty stupid.
Great news... but do we connect it to Metroid, or the price drop, or both? :)
Oh, and PAL isn't exactly a simple conversion... due to the different screen size they have to redo the game to have those big black borders on the top and bottom of the game screen. But still, it shouldn't take as long as it does... we're lucky to be here. :)
Even then, couldn't the hardware add those borders to the image data by default? Oh well, that's what Europe gets for making it's own (inferior) TV format! (Well, actually newer versions of PAL beat ours, but then again that was right around the time we got ourselves HDTV).
No, it doesn't work that way... PAL TVs aren't made to deal with that resolution... and neither are the game systems. It requires redoing the game to work in that change... plus the framerate! Remember that has to change too, as PAL runs at 25fps, not 30 like NTSC...
Well then it could also just convert the res and frame rate output. Sure it wouldn't be pretty, but it would work :D. Yeah, I get it, they have to optimize the game instead of a simple fix like that because the simple fix would result in something that would be rather unpleasent compaired to the original.
It's a very complicated process, and even Nintendo has fucked it up in the past. Just look at the European version of Wave Race 64. It's so slow. And then they have to translate everything in five different languages, etc.
I haven't actually played any games on PAL... I just know what I've heard... and it sure sounds bad.
Oh, and DJ, there just isn't a easy way to translate both the screen size and framerate...
Hurray! Those Limeys have sure been awfully nice to us lately, and now this too. I'm having to reverse a lot of my Pro-France / anti-UK-ness.
how could anyone prefer the french to the brits at any point? i mean, the brits have their fair share of quirks and downsides, but the french, ugh, don't get me started.
That brings up a good question -- how about NGC sales in the rest of europe?
Quote:Originally posted by A Black Falcon
Oh, and DJ, there just isn't a easy way to translate both the screen size and framerate...
Every XBox release in the US has been released in Europe within a week (a month at max, though I can't recall any games that took that long). There was nothing more refreshing than to be on the internet chatting to all the people who love Splinter Cell, then to go down to EB the next day and see a copy sitting on the shelf.
If Microsoft can do it, what the fuck is stopping Nintendo (and Sony - or any other publishers' games) from doing it quickly?
Laziness? Not caring? Nintendo sure doesn't seem to very much... I guess MS just gets started on the port earlier on than the others do. I bet its paying off in sales...
'Zactly.
Wasn't really arguing against anything you said.. just, expressing my contempt for the other companies in regards to doing their NTSC to Pal conversions. :)
Given what Nintendo has done to the European gaming community I'm not surprised at all that they are so far behind...
Nintendo isn't the only one though. Sony, Squaresoft, and countless others tend to prefer keeping Europe waiting. As a small bonus though, they do tend to get the new and improved "deluxe" versions of games and don't have to put up with getting a game the day it comes out only to find out you BETTER sell it now to get as much money as possible out of it because that money's going to the IMPROVED version of the game, with 2 new hidden bosses and a fancy title screen, and skateboarding!
True. Didn't you notice that their version of Metroid Prime has a whole bunch of cool improvements? I sort of wish we could get that version too... I mean from what I read it sounds like they made some nice changes...
"Notice"? I simply can't find any sites listing version differences. It's one of the hardest thigns to find for me. I'm lucky GameFAQs occasionally has a guide to version changes because that's about all I manage to find. So, what did they add to the Japanese/European version?
They added new voices from Samus's suit or something, and added an easy mode. I think. I think I'm wrong on that last part.
No wait, the last part was one of the improvements made in the Japanese version of Metroid Fusion. They added different difficulty modes (as if the game wasn't hard enough as it is).
http://www.gameforms.com/news/?732
Quote:Metroid Prime to receive enhancements for PAL release
» Hey Retro/Nintendo - try finishing the next one for the market supporting the series.
It looks like being the last place to get a game is quickly becoming the best option. On top of bonus packages from such companies as Konami, PAL gamers will now receive a powered-up version of Metroid Prime. Nintendo's instant classic will see a number of tweaks to increase difficulty, but more notably, a good bit of speech will be added to the game.
Enemies will take more shots to kill, deal more damage, and drop fewer health and ammo refills when finally killed. Environmental hazards will also do more damage. The environment will now include doors that require multiple shots to open, a touch from previous Metroid games. The optional hint system will also take longer to kick in. No word on how these changes affect any Hard Mode remaining in the game.
Other improvements include the ability to skip cutscenes on repeat trips through the game. Voice acting, which made a brief and tinny debut in Super Metroid, will be added in multiple ways. Voices will announce locked doors, read scan data and new entries in Samus' log book, and appear in the game's opening and ending sequences
As I said... really cool stuff -- voice acting, the game is harder (enemies take longer to kill, drop less powerups, and hurt you more), some doors that take multiple shots to open, less frequent hints from the hint system, you can skip cutscenes...
Yeah that's some cool stuff. Hopefully the Greatest Hits version will have these features.
"Version" eh? Greatest hits games are almost ALWAYS just the exact same disk in a different game case. The only exception I can think of is one particular PS2 game where a boosted version didn't get a subtitle change or anything but was just labelled "greatest hits".
That difficulty boost seems kinda...stupid. Isn't the game made harder in most of those ways already in hard mode? The voice acting is nice though. Were all those things added to the Japanese version as well?
Anyway, on a somewhat unrelated note, I wonder if the next Zelda game will have voice acting.
They shouldn't give territories who get the game later ANY new gaemplay options! I submit that they shouldn't add ANYTHING to future releases of the same game on the same system ever. Wait until a new generation at least, THEN rerelease it with new stuff. That should be like a rule. That way I don't feel like I'm being tortured for being poor.
That would be great... I don't know if they'd do that, but it'd be great for anyone who gets it then...
Eh, I'm just kinda annoyed is all. Improoving existing games is always a nice thing to do. It's just annoying for those who already bought the game.
I just can't wait until all consoles have the lovely addition of online support and hard drives (next gen), so that things like that aren't added to games you have to pay 50 bucks for, but rather are downloadable patches (voice acting can be stored in MP3 format or similar, and with much larger HDs likely being used next gen, that would mean such additions as that wouldn't be that big a space consumer).
Yeah... if this was X-Box (or PC of course) I'm sure that those changes would be released as a patch...
Quote:Originally posted by Dark Jaguar
"Version" eh? Greatest hits games are almost ALWAYS just the exact same disk in a different game case. The only exception I can think of is one particular PS2 game where a boosted version didn't get a subtitle change or anything but was just labelled "greatest hits".
That difficulty boost seems kinda...stupid. Isn't the game made harder in most of those ways already in hard mode? The voice acting is nice though. Were all those things added to the Japanese version as well?
Anyway, on a somewhat unrelated note, I wonder if the next Zelda game will have voice acting.
They shouldn't give territories who get the game later ANY new gaemplay options! I submit that they shouldn't add ANYTHING to future releases of the same game on the same system ever. Wait until a new generation at least, THEN rerelease it with new stuff. That should be like a rule. That way I don't feel like I'm being tortured for being poor.
What are you talking about? The PS2 GH version of Silent Hill added all of the features from the X-Box version, and the PS2 version of Crash Bandicoot had faster load times.
Quote:What are you talking about? The PS2 GH version of Silent Hill added all of the features from the X-Box version
Quote:The only exception I can think of is one particular PS2 game where a boosted version didn't get a subtitle change or anything but was just labelled "greatest hits".
That was pretty vague. And I listed two examples.
I hope that more companies do that. I'd buy the FFX GH if it came with all of the extra stuff from the Japanese international version.