http://www.gaming-age.com/cgi-bin/specia...&pagenum=1
Sometimes, someone comes along and says what everyone has thought at one time, but not put exactly the way it should be. I think this pretty much sums it up. And the only reason I'm worried is because I don't want Nintendo going away from the hardware market, but sometimes, you got to question some of their decisions....but it's cool, just gimme my games. ;)
That article is inherently flawed for the simple fact that the Gamecube did in fact sell 800,000 units worldwide from April to June, not 80,000.
In Japan the GC sales on average 10-12 thousand units a WEEK. There's about 13 weeks in those three months.
12,000 X 13 = 156,000
And that's just in Japan.
Lord Shockwave!
You've been gone so damn long I feel like we need to give you the cow.
:cow:
It was a somewhat interesting read, but they still made a huge error and used a third of their article to talk about it.
Actually the number really is 80,000, GR. First it was reported as 80,000 then as 800,000, but finally revealed to be the original number. Check for yourself:
http://cube.ign.com/articles/432/432158p1.html
Nintendo is performing very poorly right now, and games like Pacman and Donkey Konga aren't going to help matters, despite what people like lazy think.
Okay, I read the article but I still don't see how the sales could be that low! It isn't even possible!! It has consistenly sold at 10-12 thousand A WEEK just in JAPAN during that time period!! So, how on earth could it possibly have sold worldwide HALF that number!!
I don't know, but that seems to be the truth.
Simple GR, you see while over those WEEKS that's the case, anti gamecubes have been appearing and combining with the normal gamecubes (as virtual particle physics implies CAN happen, though on such a massive size it's VERY rare) and obliterating each other (not releasing energy, that's not obliteration) and this obliteration goes BOTH ways in time, thus they were never sold, so as such, we get half that number. It's a result of Nintendo using virtual particles to make their latest batch of GCNs.
Ah, of coures! How could I have forgotten about that!
Quote:but that seems to be the truth.
It isn't though.
It's not? Then why is everybody reporting it as so? Remember that they're just talking about Japanese sales.
Quote:It's not? Then why is everybody reporting it as so?
How should I know? Simply looking at sales of the GC in Japan shows it isn't that low.
Quote:Remember that they're just talking about Japanese sales.
Quote:From April to June Nintendo sold a staggering 80,000 GameCube units worldwide.
Quote:Profits were attributed primarily to still-strong demand for the Game Boy Advance, of which 3.24 million units sold across the world. In contrast, sales of the company's home console GameCube were shockingly weak; the platform sold only 80,000 units during the same period, a figure that surprised analysts
No, they're definitely talking about worldwide sales. And even it was just Japan, the sales of the GC are almost TWICE as much as those articles state!!
Where did you get those weekly sales figures? Magic-box?
Yeah, and from other sites that get weekly sales.
But Nintendo reported the 80,000 themselves, right?
Look, all I know is that the 80,000 figure can't possibly be right. Other than that I have no clue.
Why would Nintendo report such low figures if they're false?
If anyone thinks for a second that Nintendo is doing poorly or losing money needs a new brain. Nintendo makes money because of the way they handle it, they're still a more profitable company than Sony and Microsoft's console divisions (not the company whole), which pisses them off to no end.
A. Nintendo told the truth and are debating about how the company is handling it's console distribution - Probably leading to a change in management ideals on future development.
B. Nintendo lied so they can hold on to private funding without paying back its quota so Nintendo can re-use money for new console development.
Either way, they're making a new console and are giving a good amount of thought to how it will be handled. I'm wondering if Nintendo is going to micro-manage their in-house development. It wouldn't be hard for them, all you do is take your in-house development, give them a hierarchy (President, Vice President, Coffee Manager, etc), they're own label and detatch them from Nintendo. Then Nintendo does nothing but console development while this new third party works closely with them without taking eachother's money. It's American business, Japanese Business states that all things important to a company should be integrated in to the company... I dont agree with that. Networking is always a floaty business in reality, but a large company cant stand that anyways.
Well I've lost all faith in any ability they've ever had to make decisions. They do it on purpose. The N64 strategy was a blunder ...a deliciously wonderful blunder which I miss...the GC is going awry for a multitude of dumbass mistakes. I have no confidence that the next Nintendo system will fair any better.
So will Nintendo's business decisions impact how you decide on a game purchase?
And what are these bad moves everyone speaks so highly of? The only bad move i've seen from Nintendo so far in this generation is being layed back and not aggresive enough, however they have no interest in taking the #1 spot with this generation - that was decided during the pre production of the Dolphin. That lack of agression has made fans feel let down, as if a leader let down his team. But i've been playing the hell out of all the games for the Cube I own and i'm practically raping my desk right now thinking about F-Zero GX... I mean what's so bad about Nintendo right now that has you all down in the dumps?
I invite anyone to list the faults of Nintendo and explain how they have failed you in some way to you personally (as consumers and as fans).
just one thing for me: Wind Waker
Oh please, they decided that they want to be in the #3 spot? Talk about deluding yourself beyond belief. Nintendo most certainly does not want to be in third place, and Satoru Iwata (Nintendo's president) even talked at E3 about how they've been performing below expectations.
Personally I haven't seen so many AAA titles from Nintendo in such a short amount of time in my entire life, so I'm loving it. However I still want to see them continue to make consoles for many years to come so they really can't afford to be in third place again in the next generation of consoles.
And to drive the point further home,
Derek's N-Philes is reporting on Nintendo's plan to regain some of the market, and Iwata again talks about Nintendo's desperate situation:
Quote:"Investors became so overly pessimistic about our future growth potential that Nintendo's share price plummeted,'' Iwata said. In the past, Nintendo was able to maintain its decisive lead in the video game industry just by promoting new game titles via TV commercials targeted at the general public. But traditional marketing methods, which had been effective since the introduction of the company's blockbuster Family Computer models in 1983, no longer work, say company officials.
Iwata said the video game market is becoming saturated and Nintendo can no longer rest easy. That sense of crisis is a main factor behind the decision to launch the new point system, company officials said. Sony, meanwhile, is attempting to transform its game consoles into digital appliances by fusing them with the company's highly rated audio-visual equipment. Nintendo has refused to follow suit, maintaining instead that its priority is to offer entertaining game titles that anybody can readily enjoy.
Quote:Originally posted by OB1
Why would Nintendo report such low figures if they're false?
I don't know, I really don't. All I know is that 80,000 CANNOT be right. Is it supposed to 800,000? I don't know that either. But it ISN'T 80,000.
I think one of the reasons they aren't being aggresive is because they are still in a trasitionaly faze. Their leader who had led them for years stepped down and another took over the job. I think things are going to be different in the coming years and in the next generation.
I really hope so, and I am starting to gain hope for Nintendo's future.
"The sun's always brighter after the rain", at least that's what some guy said, anyway!
...
Quote:Originally posted by big guy
just one thing for me: Wind Waker
Please, if you're referring to WW graphics, then spare me. Enough of the complaints about Cel-shading. Criminy, did you <i>play</i> Wind Waker, or just curse at it's graphics from afar? They cel-shaded Link, get over it already. If you can manage to get past your preconceptions and look closely, you can see the graphics are really quite nice looking.
I am so sick of people STILL bitching about Wind Wakers graphics.
Amen, bubba! And it seems like all of the stupid WW-haters have settled in Tendo City. Emphasis on "stupid".
Don't be a Wind Waker hater! Be a Wind Waker PLAYER!!
...
Or something like that...
Quote:Originally posted by Great Rumbler
Don't be a Wind Waker hater! Be a Wind Waker PLAYER!!
...
Or something like that...
I'm gonna have to hurt you for that. That was really bad
i played the game, beat the game, and started playing through it again (you know, where you don't get the tunic and shit)> and i must say that i never once enjoyed myself as much as when i was playing OoT. i was greatly disappointed by the graphics, yes, but the gameplay was NOT there to make up for it for me. after OoT and especially Majoras Mask, WW was quite a disappointment.
Well I'm just gonna avoid an argument with you about Majora's Mask and it's immense suckiness, and just decide that if you like it better than WW, you're out of your mind.
Remember, I'm avoiding an argument :D
Someone should make an F-Zero countdown.
not to argue with you EM, but had wind waker taken the NPC depth and character interaction of MM but on a larger scale (considering the GC is more powerful than an N64) and had dungeons that were as cleverly designed as those found in MM, all while keeping the save system found in WW, i think wind waker would have been a far far better game. (although, i for one, did not mind the MM save system)
i also very much liked the mask morphing in MM, and i wasn't sure i would before playing the game, i wish that elements of that would have made a return in wind waker.
but what really hurts wind waker is that after MM, which had such a wonderfully realized game world, filled with NPCs that i actually cared about, the world of wind waker just seems soulless. it's big, yes, but empty. empty in that there isn't much do do on it but sail around, and that the characters are just hollow faces. when i saved the world in MM i felt like i was saving a world, in WW, i just got bored of sailing to the point that i didn't care what happened to the world.
and the ocarina of time is so much cooler that the wind waker baton.
MM was all about the NPC interaction, and that's where most of the development went into. That is also why there are so few dungeons in the game, and why the main quest is so incredibly short.
Ooh, I missed an arguement! Don't worry, I'll be sure to reply in full when I get back home...
yes, OB1, the main quest was quite short, but so was WWs. not as short, but with more space on a disk, and and easier to develop for machine, i think they could have included more of the positive aspects of Majoras Mask into wind waker, had they bothered to.
you can't tell me it wouldn't be cool to have 4 or 5 windfall island sized islands, bustling with people who live their own lives and have their own schedules, their own boats for traveling between islands, relationships with people in other towns. and they could incorporate the helping people into the main quest. maybe to get the triforce maps you have to help a bunch of people through a trading sequence, or help someone through a dungeon like the anju/kafei scenario in MM. i would certainly find this method of gaining items preferable to the scrounging for rupees and then paying tingle 493 of them to decode a map.
or maybe there'd be an island that you can't reach from the water, and it has a dungeon on it, so you have to help a guy and he'll let you borrow his hot air balloon to go over the island and infiltrate it, or something like that.
i mean, there are plenty of ways to integrate the character interaction into the main story, and i think that with the more powerful hardware, they probably could have had 100+ characters all going about their business (MM had 50).
the only problem i can think of is that without a 3 day time limit, how can these people be programed to go on indefinately? well, they don't have to, have them each have a cycle that they go through for a few days and then it repeats. it's not completely realistic, but better than having lifeless NPCs that do the same thing every time you walk up to them.
Disc space has nothing to do with it. You only really need a lot of disc space if you plan on using high-quality sound and FMV. Just because the GC discs hold much more data than N64 carts doesn't automatically mean that games are going to be longer. It still takes a lot of hard work to make a game. WW was built from scratch in just two and half years, which is almost half the amount of time it took to make OoT. MM was made so quickly because it recycled the OoT engine, and that is the same reason why the next GC Zelda game is going to use the WW engine.
It would be great if there was more character interaction in WW, but after MM I didn't expect the entire series to change in that direction. MM was a great side game, a fun experiement. That style of gameplay definitely should not become the standard for Zelda, IMO. WW's main quest was short compared to OoT's, but it was definitely longer than MM's main quest. But that's not what MM was about, it was about character interaction and sidequests, and it was great how different it was from past Zelda titles. I also expect the next GC Zelda to be very different from WW in terms of gameplay.
Long time no see Laser Link. And even lazy crawled out of his hole. :P
You know, I used to care about the sales figures and such, but to be honest, I don't care anymore. Just as long as Nintendo keeps making games, and keeps making a profit, I think that they, and me, can rest easy. Because let's be honest, they're NOT going to take the #1 spot from Sony OR Microsoft because they're too big and have lots more money to throw at the problems than Nintendo does, so Nintendo avoids creating those problems in the first place. :)
I'm playing my Cube and PS2 and XBox and having fun, not caring about who's leading, who's winning, etc. Because it's pointless to do so, so leave it to other people who can do it, like the press. :)
*goes back to play Star Wars Classic and Mario Golf*
i understand that disk space does not necessarily mean a longer game, however, it does allow you to store more textures, more sounds, etc... the fact of the matter is, that with more space to store things, you can store more things. and i don't feel that all zelda games should revolve around character interaction, but having such detailed characters was a great addition to zelda, IMO, and since it's been done before, why not do it again? when building the WW engine, they could have incorporated the character life calculating aspects from the OoT engine that they enhanced for MM.
it seems to me that rather than building on the foundations laid by both N64 games, and creating something truely great, they took a step back, looked only at OoT and made a few small improvements here and there, failed to match the cleverness of the dungeon design, and made a game that is an improvement over OoT in strictly technical terms. yes, the graphics are more complex, but the game isn't an improvement overall, and as such, disappoints. i think that adding the complex NPC characters from MM could have helped with this...you obviously don't.
Well I find MM to be much more inferior than OoT, even though it is still a great game. MM was in many ways a step back for the series (or a step to the side, to be more precise) and I definitely don't want it to become the standard style for the series. More NPC interaction would be great, but then they'd have less time for everything else. If you can add the extra NPC interaction on top of everything, then great. But if it takes away from everything else then I don't want it. Unless of course it's the second Zelda game on that particular console, in which case I do want them to try out different things.
The disc space point is pointless (haha! I'm so witty) because they still have to work harder to make bigger levels and such.
