Quote:Nintendo announced today that in March they cut the royalty rates for GameCube development charged to outside developers. Nintendo stated their previous rates were a little too aggressive, and many developers were reluctant to pay them. The new rates make Nintendo more competitive with Sony and Microsoft.

Nintendo cited the success of titles like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City as their reasoning behind the move. "The biggest games of the year last year were games like GTA and they came from an independent publisher," said Nintendo's George Harrison. "We need to make sure that we have good relationships with all the independent publishers, because you never know where the next big hit game is going to come from."

Earlier this week Nintendo announced that they had not met their yearly sales goal of 10 million GameCube consoles. In fact, they fell well short of the goal selling only 5.6 million consoles during their fiscal year. Nintendo wants to convince game developers that Nintendo's GameCube is a viable platform, and worth the time and money it takes for them to develop games for it. At this year's E3 show in Los Angeles, Nintendo plans to place more emphasis on third-party titles in an effort to convince developers of this. "Games from Namco, Sega, and Capcom...we think are going to be just as important in helping to sell our hardware system this year as much as our own games," Harrison said. "We are going to sell a lot of GameCube and its our job to convince them that we are."