21st February 2003, 8:53 AM
How could Nintendo never be on top again? Businesses rise and fall constantly, it's their nature. The PSX was scraping the barrel before they invested tons of cash in marketing for FF7. After that, Sony and their 3rd parties realized that showing pretty graphics or game content didn't matter, you just had to make the commercial funny or hip. When I was working at Babbages during the lauunch of FF7 we had hundreds of people returning the game because they thought it was like Zelda. I would try to explain to them what an RPG is and people didn't get it. Sony continued to market it as a movie, showing clips of FMV, and before you knew it the game was #1. The first truely succesful RPG in the states. It was that one game that made the PSX a hit with mostly kids and some older teenagers (over 15) who bought the game because of hype, and continued playing because of the action and the adult themes without EVER having played an RPG before or even knowing what an RPG is.
In Japan, no one wanted an XBox. They wouldn't even consider it. As soon as XBox Live was released, it has almost overtaken the Gamecube. And along with marketing, many of the XBox titles that were ignored are now selling in high volumes. One could predict that the XBox will eventually overtake the PS2 and any future consoles from Sony, worldwide. A perepheral for online play = Final Fantasy 7...? It could be. It happened before.
Now we just wait and see. But saying a company can never be on top again in it's industry is just dumb. What if it was Nintendo that brought out Gamecube Live? How long do you think it would take Nintendo to reach an installed userbase of 16,318,000 from 3,664,000? that's 12,654,000 Gamecubes to be sold. So let's say it took 2 years to reach 4 million, that's 2 million a year. So in 6 years the Gamecube would have caught up with the PS2. And if there was a game or perepheral that pushed more sales, that number could be cut in half. These are the same numbers that Microsoft and Nintendo are going through right now.
In Japan, no one wanted an XBox. They wouldn't even consider it. As soon as XBox Live was released, it has almost overtaken the Gamecube. And along with marketing, many of the XBox titles that were ignored are now selling in high volumes. One could predict that the XBox will eventually overtake the PS2 and any future consoles from Sony, worldwide. A perepheral for online play = Final Fantasy 7...? It could be. It happened before.
Now we just wait and see. But saying a company can never be on top again in it's industry is just dumb. What if it was Nintendo that brought out Gamecube Live? How long do you think it would take Nintendo to reach an installed userbase of 16,318,000 from 3,664,000? that's 12,654,000 Gamecubes to be sold. So let's say it took 2 years to reach 4 million, that's 2 million a year. So in 6 years the Gamecube would have caught up with the PS2. And if there was a game or perepheral that pushed more sales, that number could be cut in half. These are the same numbers that Microsoft and Nintendo are going through right now.