One for all you Cube fans..

tHE vAGGABOND

I have the joy of telling you that the Cube is doing awful business in Japan, as well as the XBox.

It was outsold by PS2 *and* the GBA last week..

I have said if for ages, the lack of virtually any 3rd party games and the poor quality of all but 1 or 2 games would hurt them..

Shinji

The Cube sales graph is weird. It'll happily do 150k - 200k units in a week when a big game comes out for it, and then fall back to practically nothing in other weeks. PS2 tends to keep on a more even keel - the last game to sell a lot of PS2 units in a week was Xenosaga.

Yeah, the Cube could do with more software in Japan. One major launch every two months isn't really enough. The schedules look like picking up around summer, though, and the installed base is already big enough to support major releases so nobody is going to start pulling support in a hurry.

tHE vAGGABOND

Is that directly from a Ninty press release rob, or is that your own spin on the woeful sales

Gonzo

those sales figures are indeed quite correct, ive read those exact figures on many websites. The Gamecube launch has been a stunning success for all although not enough copies of Super Monkey Ball were made available to satisfy its overwhelming demand. Looks like things are back to the good ol days for nintendo and bout time too.

Gonzo

the sales figures for first 2 days of the launch were approx 75,000 gamecubes sold in Uk and 50,000 gamecubes sold in Germany, the sales figures for first 2 days could well be over 200,000 or even 300,000 if you combine the sales throughout the EU countries but I dont think the offical EU total has been announced yet.

tHE vAGGABOND

Were talking about Japan here tho, not Europe

Dont be at yourself

Still, its not getting outsold by the Wonderswan or Dreamcast now, is it? *cough*

But yeah - they're a pretty distant second to the PS2 and I can't see sales picking up until Ninty get their key franchises onto the shelves.

I think vagga is lashing out cos his precious Xbox is failing :P

tHE vAGGABOND

I may have worked on a XBox title but own none of them, I just dont like the cube and cube weenies and Im happy to see it getting its ass wipped in Japan

(its not in a respectible 3rd, its in 3rd with less than a 1/4 of the sales of the GBA in second)

Greenbean

Its all early days yet. I find it really hard to align myself behind any console manufacturer - its not like they're football teams or something. My take on things is Nintendo do good games - with no must-haves out yet, PS2 does loads of games (many ****) with plenty of diversity and some good ones too (a few must haves exist) and the xbox is getting fairly badly hammered at the moment due to the high price and lack of pedigree, even though it has a very very respectable line-up plus an almost must-have in Halo.

Giblet

Jesus console funboys, man it's just a console. Its for playing games, it has no effect on your life if it sells bad. Dreamcast sold terrible and had the besy games imo. And its damn cheap, i also have a ps2, and the games aren't to great compared to what I have for the dc, sales dont mean sh*t. Got doom64 for 5 euro there the other day. Tis a brillo game.
So while your there laughing at the GC, and stoking your console, i'll be playing games.

DeadBankClerk

Originally posted by tHE vAGGABOND
I may have worked on a XBox title but own none of them, I just dont like the cube and cube weenies and Im happy to see it getting its ass wipped in Japan

(its not in a respectible 3rd, its in 3rd with less than a 1/4 of the sales of the GBA in second)

the game boy has been topping the console charts since 1988 tbh vagga - the only competion it has is the wonderswan like.

Oh, and the atari Lynx

tHE vAGGABOND

your right, its amazing how well the GB and the GBA sell week in and week out...

Kevok

Yah the GBA is a bit too good. Imagine how much nintendo would clean up if a zelda GBA game needed to link to the GC to play properly.

The GC and the XBOX are both suffering from N64 syndrome IMHO, XBOX a bit worse because it's up against 2 strong incumbents. The GC has more games out for it now than the N64 had in it's first 6 months of release at least. So that will fair better.

GC selling 400'000 in one week in Europe sounds pretty good to me

http://www.cube-europe.com
http://cube.ign.com

Hobbes

Originally posted by DeadBankClerk



the game boy has been topping the console charts since 1988 tbh vagga - the only competion it has is the wonderswan like.

from Nintendo's history.

End of 2000, Nintendo sold more then 110 million Game Boys. GB accounted for 47% of all US hardware system sales.

Pokémon Gold and Silver for Game Boy Color make their U.S. debut in October, becoming the fastest-selling games of all time by selling a combined 1.4 million copies in one week and 6 million through December.

2001 Nintendo launches its highly anticipated Game Boy Advance in Japan on March 21 and the U.S. on June 11, and sells one million units in six weeks (in US).

Following the success of the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo launches the Nintendo GameCube home video game console in Japan on September 14. The U.S. launch on November 18 smashes previous U.S. sales records, becoming the fastest-selling next generation hardware system.

Btw I own 2 GBA's (12-15 games) and I know there are at least 2 GBC's in the house somewhere as well and I think my house could easily add another 4 to that total of GB's bought.

rymus

Originally posted by tHE vAGGABOND
I just dont like the cube and cube weenies and Im happy to see it getting its ass wipped in Japan

Lashing out? Who?

tHE vAGGABOND

who me? thats unpossible

Quigs Snr

I'm going to buy them all anyway. I always do in the end. However, I am far more excited about the Nintendo than the XBOX. It should really be only about the games and to that end, Nintendo have ALWAYS made the best first party games. What killed, the N64, was the cartridge format and the effect this had on games. No FMV, music limited etc... the reason the PSX became cool and thus took off was because you had games like wipeout with cool soundtracks, games like resident evil and FF7 with FMV. These were the cool things at the time that people wanted to see and hear.

The cartrigde format offered less margin for profit than the humble CD, publishers got less of a return on an N64 game, so instead they developed more for the PSX. This is why the PSX had far more games. Coding wise the N64 was that bit harder to code for too.

In short, there wasn't a level playing pitch to start with.

I think there is now. Games are easier to develop on the cube than they were on the 64, the new media is cheaper, greater margins for developers etc.... Plus you can bet your ass that 'Shiggsy' will be pumping out a few must haves in the very near future. It will be interesting to see what RARE come up with too, after Banjo, Donkey Kong 64, GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, etc... I am looking forward to seeing what they come up with.

Surely they must be the best '2nd party (to coin a phrase) developer out there.

Xbox, will have to rely on PC refugees, which is no bad thing, as I think the PC is the greatest format out there. A decent gaming rig costs a lot more than the XBOX and you would imagine that a lot of people would buy the XBOX to be able to play PC games in their home. However it is starting to look very much like an awful lot of potential customers must already have a PC. People like me are waiting for the PC version of HALO, so that is reducing it's must have factor (and maybe bringing the sales down a bit on what they would have been, had the XBOX not been so closely linked with the PC). Lot's of people bought an N64 just to play Goldeneye, Mario or Zelda, knowing they were never coming out on anything else. Every console needs one or two of these titles at the start to give it a fighting chance. However the XBOX has no real exclusives, it's prize asset, HALO will be out on the PC soon enough.

That said, I really hope they all do well enough to survive. You need a SNES vs Megadrive contest going on all the time. Back then the games got better and better. The PSX on the other hand got better up to 1999, maybe early 2000 then just got worse, most titles after that were lazy sequels, cheap rip offs, and plain boring. These days embarrasments like ET grace the console. This is what happens when you get a runaway winner, things stagnate, with no real competition there is a tendency to get lazy, so I say good luck microsoft and Nintendo, keep Sony on their toes and we might get more decent games (and less ****ty extreme sports cheapo nonesense).

Let the games begin.

koneko

My god, this happens every time. I said something about the Gamecube before (I don't like the games on offer for it), people freak out. I said I like the Xbox, people freak out.

People, stop getting so sensitive, it's just a friggin console. Chill :P

[edit] Just want to add in that the nexto person that flames me over not liking Super Monkey Ball gets a hot poker in the eye [/edit]

tHE vAGGABOND

what koneco said!

Quigs Snr

Amazing how people get heated up about their consoles. This really began in ernest in the Megadrive vs SNES war. Back then I think I may have once been threatened with physical violence, because I laughed at Mortal Kombat on the SNES and dared to suggest that the Megadrive had better games.

Some people invest a few quid in a console and then spend the next 5 years, explaining why their machine is better. Well lads, it doesn't matter, the Dreamcast was outsold by the PSX, and it was far better (and it's still got better games than the PS2 imoh).

The games matter and you either like them or don't, it's like music, one mans wine is another's poison. I for instance didn't like Tekken, my brother, an avid gamer all his life, doesn't like Half Life, Koneko doesn't like SMB, I have grave reservations over MGS2 which I am playing at the moment also. Big swing.

There are even - gulp - people who think that Fifa is better than ISS !

It's all about the games, I know this because I once bought Mario64 and Goldeneye (the pair for 50quid) in the N64's heyday. I saw them on special and got excited. A week later, I went to gamesworld and bought the console (and zelda) incidentally my girlfriend took a liking to Mario and Zelda and completed them both, I haven't been able to get near the N64 since I bought it.

koneko

Exactly. Play games. Play the ones you like. Keep on liking them. Does it really matter if some other people don't? That's the good thing about people, we're not all exactly the same...

leejon

Are theses boards - discussion boards or just plain old bitch about something and see who retaliates and set off a pointless argument. The console thing is a perfect example, what did you people do before the cube was released, slate the xbox and then prior to that who cares.
People will buy the console that they want and not listen to pathetic run downs by people who own opposing formats.
I own a GC and prefer that to any of the others. PS2 - tons of games, not every one is brilliant though, Xbox - expensive and keeps trying too change with the market.
So I like my machine and I'm glad I bought it, end of my comment.