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GameCube (Games) Entertainment Games

Eidos To Stop GameCube Development 64

Posted by simoniker from the lara-and-kirby-not-chums dept.
Thanks to The Times Online for their article indicating that Eidos has announced that they will no longer develop GameCube titles. The article, based on comments made as the company announced their financial results, explains that "...there were no plans for Eidos, Europe's second largest games developer, to release any games for the struggling GameCube, which has sold about 1.8 million units in Europe compared with sales of 15 million for Sony's PS2." Eidos CEO Mike McGarvey commented: "The GameCube is a declining business... If other companies follow us [Nintendo] will have a hard battle to fight." This follows similar anti-GameCube comments by Acclaim a couple of months back.
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Eidos To Stop GameCube Development

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  • If you notice the titles of espn sports games being produced by sega; I.E Espn football, basketball and hockey not one is coming out for the game cube. Only ps2 and xbox. Looks like the Gamecube is going the way of the N64 only 1st party games and a slow trickle of 3rd party games.

    • Re:Sega also (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Looks like?

      As far as I'm concerned, that's almost how it has been since day 1. With a few exceptions (ie, Sega's Super Monkey Ball, Namco's SC2), most of the AAA titles (Zelda, Metroid, Mario Golf, etc.) have been 1st party titles, most of which also been sequels or related to an earlier Nintendo game in the past.

      I like my Cube just as much as my XBOX and PS2 (although a bit more than my PS2 at the moment), but I faily to see how this is any different from their last system. Nintendo needs to get on the
    • The lack of ESPN Sega Sports games on Gamecube has far less to do with slagging sales and more to do with the fact that Gamecube's memory cards are tiny compared to what a big sports game with a Franchise mode really needs for storage. If the Gamecube had a larger storage standard, they'd probably still have Sega Sports games. Saying that Sega won't continue supporting the Gamecube would be wrong.

  • Starting to Feel Distraught (Score:5, Insightful)

    by swdunlop ( 103066 ) <swdunlop AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday September 06, 2003 @01:29AM (#6886008) Homepage
    All these game developers not writing games for my GameCube is starting to make me worry that I won't have the more high quality games for my console.. Er.. Wait.. What did Eidos publish that I gave a damn about? I mean, after System Shock 2..

    I bought my GameCube, because I like Nintendo's games, not so I could get more of the same from companies like Eidos.
    • Hey, they had that one hit...what was it...oh, right, Daikatana! What a great game...wonder whatever happend to Ion Storm?

      Oh how I wish I never bought that game. It provided me with about an hour of fun, except that's when I realized what I was having wasn't fun, in fact, what I was having was "not fun."

      They had that other game though, Tomb Raider? Oh, right, you're talking about games that don't suck...let's see...Anachronox? Well, that sucked too, but it was kinda cool wasn't it? Maybe not.

      They

    • Amen, I was wondering when someone would actually point out that Edios hasn't made a game worth playing in years. Someone post some news when a real developer quits the cube... then we all might care.
    • Eidos is no big loss at all, Really what have they created for the GameCube that has been worth wild?

      The Italian Job (nope)
      Hitman 2: Silent Assassin (nope, Uber late)
      Swingerz Golf (nope)
      TimeSplitters 2 (okay this one was good!)
      Blood Omen 2 (nope, Uber late too)

      every time they release a hit game for the Cube its months late.

      The only game that I'm looking forward to by them is Deus Ex 2 and I'm getting that for my PC not for any console.

      The way I see it, this is just one less crappy company making

  • GC's Unshakeable Bad Rap (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Trillian_1138 ( 221423 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMfridaythang.com> on Saturday September 06, 2003 @01:31AM (#6886016)
    And how many XBox's are there in Europe?

    I wouldn't be surprised if it's more than there are GameCubes, but it damn sure isn't 15 million. As anyone who reads games.slashdot regularly, Nintendo does continue to beat out XBox worldwide. Admitadly, not by much, and the majority of that is due to the Japanese market. But the market does exist for GameCube. I _just_ bought one, the first and only of ANY of the Next Gen systems I plan to buy. And I'm here in the U.S. of A. F-Zero GX, Zelda, Mario, and Samus, to name a few, continue to be a bigger draw for me. In addition, as someone who starts college in less than two weeks, I'm looking forward to having the system with the best party games out there.

    The fact of the matter is, Nintendo sales WILL decline if companys continue to state the 'obvious': that "GameCube is a declining business." Bullshit. It's declining because you're helping it to do so. Nintendo isn't doing all they can to sell the system either (and from other posts and storys on Slashdot, Europe gets the short end of the stick again and again), but if a company leaves a system then that company will sell no games on that system...

    Why does Nintendo continue to get the bad rap? I do fear that the GameCube will go the route of the N64, but I can only plan so far ahead. That doesn't stop me from enjoying the fun-as-hell games that are out there now, and coming out soon. Mario Sunshine, Super Monkey Ball, F-Zero GX, Rogue Leader, Pikmin, Eternal Darkness... And soon, stuff like Rogue Squadren 3 and a new Mario Kart.

    The GC may end up 'losing' the console wars, but that doesn't mean owners won't have a damn good time playing what comes out for it for the next couple years. Or even longer. I still play my old-school Nintendo Entertainment System. And y'know what? I still find it damn entertaining.

    -Trillian

    • I totally agree with you, though I don't think the GCN will go the way of the N64. After all, the N64's biggest hinderance was the cartridge format. You had to cram everything into 64 MB, you had to pay for every meg you used, and the cartridges were rumored to cost around $30 to manufacture a piece (though I have a little difficulty believing that). Without that main sticking point, I think the GameCube has a lot more staying power.

      I was playing Soul Calibur 2 last night on mine and I mentioned to a f

  • Future Headlines (Score:4, Funny)

    by UltimaL337Star ( 641853 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @01:33AM (#6886022)
    Eidos blames Nintendo Gamecube for poor box office rates on Tomb Raider 2 by not having a larger selection of Tomb Raider titles of which Eidos claims "We would've developed more Tomb Raider games for the GC, but Lara's breast would never fit on a mini-cd, that's not even counting the animation files for real time jugglyness effect."

  • Do 1st party games rule the GC? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by clu76 ( 620823 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @01:37AM (#6886030) Homepage
    I have a fairly descent sized Gamecube library. And I noticed something today after reading this article. More than half of my GC library consists of Nintendo 1st party games. Granted, I'm a Nintendo fanboy, through and through. But it got me thinking. Maybe one of the reasons 3rd party developers don't fair so well on the Cube is because (as a generalization), those who buy Nintendo consoles buy Nintendo produced games. Could it be that Nintendo games are so popular for the system, that they take away sales from 3rd party developers, contributing to the problem of having 3rd parties to stop developing for the cube?

    • Re:Do 1st party games rule the GC? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CashCarSTAR ( 548853 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @04:17AM (#6886319)
      I think you're pretty much right. The crap that would sell on the PS2 and the X-Box, just doesn't get the same traction on the GameCube

      It's a different market, to be honest. As well, it's a market where the bar is set really really high to begin with. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Well, it's obviously a bad thing for the Edios' and the Acclaims of the world..although Timesplitters 2 and Burnout were great respectivly.

      Capcom made some exclusive Resident Evil games. Great. They looked silly next to Eternal Darkness.
      The shooters looked silly next to Metriod Prime. The platformers looked silly next to Mario Sunshine. (See where this is going?)

      What Nintendo is doing, is they are building a small empire built around a relativly high number of game studios to make top notch games for them, ensuring very high quality. Working with companies such as Sega as well, giving them full support.

      Unfortunatly, in such an atmosphere of quality, there is no room for the schlock-flingers of the 3rd party world.

      Oh well.
    • No, it's just that all the other games suck.

      Nintendo is making (and contracting/funding) high-quality, innovative games - Eternal Darkness, Metroid, Animal Crossing, Zelda, and so on. These games are awesome, and are worth the price paid for them. The problem is that there are so few good games being released today, and they have to spread themselves over three consoles.

      Back in the SNES days, all the good games were SNES games, because that's all there was - unless you liked sports games. The Genesis wasn

  • this is fud, eidos makes crap games (Score:5, Insightful)

    by honold ( 152273 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @01:46AM (#6886046)
    go search amazon [amazon.com] for soul calibur 2:

    gamecube - Amazon.com Sales Rank: 10
    xbox - Amazon.com Sales Rank: 49
    ps2 - Amazon.com Sales Rank: 55

    similar reports have been echoed by major retailers such as electronics boutique [ebgames.com]

    check out their front page and you'll see the #1-selling game is the gamecube soul calibur 2, followed by the xbox soul calibur 2, followed by...f-zero gx for the gamecube.

    content counts, people. nintendo makes great first-party games, and people buy them. namco made a great third-party game with a compelling bonus feature, and people have bought it.
    • The higher sales for Soul Calibur 2 for GC might be due to the fact that there are no other good fighting games for GC (except maybe Super Smash Brothers) while PS has Virtua Fighter 4, Xbox DOA3. If your title has no competition on your platform, selling alot of units is practically guaranteed.
    • The only reason sc2 sold better for GC is it had link. If he wasn't the exclusive for gc then I would guess the figures would more closely reflect the console hardware percentages. Sure, if there were tons of multiplatform games, and they all had better features on the GC, it would help, but the reality is that console success is based more on the number and quality of exlusive games it has.

  • Time 2 Split! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by M3wThr33 ( 310489 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @01:56AM (#6886070) Homepage
    In other news, Free Radical will no longer let Eidos publish their titles, so TimeSplitters 3 will most likely still be Cube-bound.

    But really this is all about how Nintendo is slow to bring games over to Europe.
    I mean, the GameCube has more million-sellers worldwide(AND in the USA as well) than the XBox. Nintendo's raking in over $1 MILLION profit a DAY. I really fail to see a problem with a losing company pulling out.
    What's been the last couple failed companies?
    Eidos, Acclaim, 3D0 and Interplay? Oh yeah! Tons of blockbusters there! (Pardon HOMM and Fallout) American programmers need to learn to program better, rather than chickening out. Good to know they would rather go where it's easiest and presents no challenge of sales to profit.
  • how many 3rd party gamecube games are out anyways? a dozen?

    most companies wrote-off the GC from the start, hell, the only reason i have one is for the 1st party games anyways, my serious gaming is done on my PS2, X-Box or PC, i use the GC for my casual gaming.

    most people that have a GC are either 12 or have another medium to play games with, Nintendo just hasn't learned how to compete in the adult gamer society we've evolved into nowadays and the Gamecubes decline is proof of this.

  • The problem I find with Gamecube... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Is the name. They should have stuck with the legacy and called it Nintendo . I have a Game Cube, and it it doesn't feel like Nintendo 64 did.

    "I'm going to play Nintendo" vs. "I'm going to play Game Cube".
    • It's called the Nintendo Gamecube. Take a look at every piece of 'cube hardware you own. Even the memory cards and the GBA/GC Link Cable say "Nintendo Gamecube." Feel free to keep calling it "playing Nintendo," just like I'll keep calling you "dumbass."

      • That's what I do.

        On the phone: "Whatcha doin?" "Playing Nintendo football." (I'm actually playing Madden NFL 2003, but I'm fine with the imprecision.)

        While with a friend: "So, do you want to go catch a movie, or stay here and play Nintendo?"

        Asking a friend: "What good Nintendo games are in the pipeline?"

        Telling a friend: "Yeah, I'm off to Fry's to pick up a new memory card for my Nintendo. That Madden is such a memory hog."

        Later: "Picked up a new Nintendo game while I was out."

        Yup. Works fine for

  • oh no not eidos! (Score:3, Funny)

    by gedanken ( 24390 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @02:30AM (#6886140)
    http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003-07 -09&res=l [penny-arcade.com] replace acclaim with eidos.

  • Whatever. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Saturday September 06, 2003 @02:48AM (#6886178) Homepage
    This is a standard gambit. People do it to Apple all the time. Your company is doing poorly, so you write off a section of your company and use it to make you seem important. This announcement has two purposes. The first is that it lets them retreat out of the GameCube market and make it seem like Nintendo's fault, not theirs-- the media reports it as "*Nintendo is dying" not "Eidos has failed to make any compelling gamecube titles". (The truth would be somewhere in between, along the lines of "The games Eidos has been releasing for Gamecube are not enough to justify the expense of training and porting to the Gamecube." But that isn't going to get reported in any case, because it isn't very sensationalistic.) The second purpose is it makes Eidos seem important. Your gut reaction on hearing this article is something like "Wow, if companies as significant as Eidos are abandoning the GC, Nintendo must be in trouble." This thought comes automatically enough you don't stop to think, wait a minute, Eidos isn't particularly one of the significant companies right now.

    Saying the Gamecube is dying is rediculous. It isn't number one and isn't going to be there probably ever. But it's doing very, *very* far from poorly. There have been a number of times over the GC's life cycle that it has been fair to say "OK, nintendo is in trouble", but this is definitely not one of them. This is the one of the GOOD spots. Nintendo is making *profits* on the GC, which is certainly more than Microsoft can say. The Gamecube outsold the PS2 last week. And the Gamecube is entering one of its best bits of game library in a LONG time. After a long, long summer of drought among GC games, with nothing of note being released but MegaMan, we just got F-Zero and (yes, cross-platform) Soul Calibur 2 released last week. Coming next month is Kirby's Air Ride, TMNT, XIII, that wierd sega Billy Hatcher thing, and Viewtiful Joe. At least two of these October games look to be legitimate blockbusters. The month after that Super Mario Kart is coming out, and that's one of Nintendo's most successful titles. That's an IMPRESSIVE crop of games, and when that crop of games grows totally old, it will be about March, which is when Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and Pikmin 2 are released. I'm not going to say anything as to how this stacks up to how PS2/xbox are doing at the moment because I'm not qualified to comment on that, but one thing is certain: This is *NOT* a moment of "decline" of any sort for the Gamecube and Eidos' statement its a closing-down market is just silly.

    And even if this weren't the case and the GC weren't succeeding on its own merits, the GBA looks to be making enough money and kicking enough ass that Nintendo could prop up a failing GC unit for about as long as Microsoft would bother to prop up a failing xbox unit..

    Either way, Eidos leaving makes VERY little difference. I'm sure they make great stuff for other platforms, and I really liked the first two (first two) tomb raider games. But Eidos on the Gamecube? Hell, I can't even name you *ONE* game they made for the GC. Was that "timesplitters" thing theirs? Whatever it is they've been releasing for the GC, it hasn't been exceptional enough or marketed well enough to stay in my memory.. If my single data point is indicative of GC owners in general, that might have to do with why they aren't making any money on the GC.
    • Yeah, I used preview, but it's late and i'm tired..

      Where I said "The Gamecube outsold the PS2 last week".. that is a typo. What it should have said is "The Gamecube outsold the PS2 last week IN JAPAN". This is still a very significant event, but not quite so much so as my typo'd version implied. :) My reference is here.. [gamespot.com]
  • Well, first off, the only Eidos published game I even own is Timesplitters 2 for my gamecube, and Allstar baseball 2002 is my only Acclaim game (from the previous Acclaim debacle). Eidos isn't the only company I couldn't care less if they leave gamecube development. So they're complaining about the crappy sales of Hitman 2 for the gamecube. Perhaps if it didn't come out 6 months after it came out for the other consoles and turned out to be a half-assed port, then it might have sold better.

    There are a lo

  • A horse race. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @05:04AM (#6886372) Journal
    If you see it as a race we have the following situation. It is a three horse race with Gamecube and X-box currently battling it out for 2nd and 3rd place. PS2 has long since finished and is now enjoying a good rubbing down and a selection of the finest oats. In the vip gallery is standing the PC. It doesn't take part in races since all its competition died decades ago. It is chatting with Gameboy Advance who still wants to race except that all its competitors drop over before they get to the starting block. It only has its own siblings to beat wich just gets a little boring.

    Now why is everyone so obessed with those 2 losers battling it out? Sure you may enjoy your gamecube or X-box but you are like the person who still says C64 all the way.

    I still don't understand one thing. Why are so few games cross-platform. Isn't it so that the greatest cost in making a game is the creation of the world/art not the coding of the engine itself? If this is so porting the engine should be trivial compared to the total development cost. For the real world see how many cars are not made into rightside drive versions for countries like england. Or different voltages. Or different measurement systems.

    • This is how I see it.
      You start development on a game. Base it for the PS2 since the userbase is so large and ignorant that ANYTHING will sell. If it's high enough, you can continue working toward another version. This time make it on a simpler codebase, for the PC and XBox in nearly one shot. Then there's the GameCube. Sure it's easy enough to develop/port for(Better than the PS2), but the fact remains is that you are going to compete with the world's best games. Considering the 8 million sellers on the cub

  • Good riddance (Score:3, Informative)

    by Yorrike ( 322502 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @08:19AM (#6886811) Journal
    I am a big Nintendo fan. The reason I have great admiration for Nintendo and give them a large amount of money every year is because they produce vastly superior, quality products, giving me a good experience for the money I hand over.

    Eidos produce nothing but crap in-house. Sure they have some worth-while third parties who publish through them (Free Radical being the good people who worked at Rare and produced GoldenEye), but all the same, for the most part, the GameCube and all it's happy users will be much better off without the crap mongoring crap monkeys that are Eidos pushing their crap onto us.

    Sorry Eidos, but Tomb Raider isn't big, or good anymore, so no one cares what you think.

  • You know... (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Spleener12 ( 587422 ) *
    You could easily replace "Acclaim" with "Eidos" and this strip [penny-arcade.com] would still make perfect sense now.
  • As far as my quick research showed, Eidos has released 3 games for the Cube. None of which I own. One of which Eidos won't be publishing the sequel for (Timesplitters 2). So why should I care?
  • I cannot imagine that anyone has ever gone buy a console, picked up and considered the GC, but then said "Ooh, but there aren't a lot of Acclaim and Eidos titles for it", and then went and bought a PS2.

    People buy consoles because of the games that already exist for it. They want Halo or KOTOR, so they buy an XBox. They want GTA:VC or Final Fantasy, so they buy a PS2. They want Zelda or Metroid, so they buy a GC.

    The thing is that the XBox and the PS2 are fighting for very similar customers there - especial
    • My only reaction to this is to think: "Oh no!!! If this keeps up, I won't be able to buy any shitty games at all for my GameCube!! Oh woe is me".

      Seriously, outside of Timesplitters 2, were there any games released by Eidos for the Cube that either weren't complete crap, weren't ports released far later than they were on other platforms, or both? And given that, is it Nintendo's fault that the games didn't sell, or Eidos' fault for having a shitty business plan?
  • It's a sad day when a company decides to not build a product because the target market is "only" 1.8 million people.

    What's next ? FOX deciding that SpeedVision (RIP) should carry more NASCAR because the rally/motorcycle racing market is much less than the oval-racing crowd ? Or Clear Channel not airing independent music because let's face it, Britney is simply more successful ? Or companies deciding to ignore other OSs because Windows sells more than all of them combined ? Oh wait...

    Monoculture, here we

  • Acclaim and Eidos leaving the GameCube market opens the door for other publishers to increase their sales on that platform.
    • Yes, without the six thousand pound gorillas that are notorious for crap-spewing on the GameCube, it makes it much easier for smaller publishers (which may/may not in fact release more crap, but at least different crap) to survive on the GC as opposed to the more decentralized releases on the PS2 and XBox.
  • Once again, the rabid nintendoites need a good hosing down. I could see where the replies here were going to end up the instant I saw the article.

    Face it, people, you may like your system but that doesn't mean that it's either a) The best system or b) The system most likely to make money. Game developers are in it for money and game development isn't cheap anymore. So when a game company struggles, good or bad, they're going to try to focus on the markets they find most profitable. Right now, Eidos has j
    • GC is somehow BETTER because it doesn't have a DVD player in a console generation that coincides with DVDs becoming the most successfuly media ever launched;

      I was complaining to an acquaintance of mine (who happens to work for microsoft) about the extra fee to unlock the DVD playback feature on the Xbox. He said the reason Micrsoft charges extra is because they have to pay a licensing fee to Sony for the DVD movie feature. It was a way for microsoft to lower the price of the XBox for those who didn't n
      • Well, that's a fair argument. There was a big thing here a week ago about the DVD not being in the Gamecube. I think that it's fine to make the business decision to keep out DVD playback to keep costs down. But any quotes from Nintendo executives you read on the subject make it sound as if adding DVD playback is detrimental to a console, as if it's not somehow a "pure" game machine.

        Plus, I personally disagree with the business decision. I think DVD playback was a major selling point to consumers. The tim
        • I certainly agree with you on a number of points. I think the three biggest factors for the success of the Playstation 2 were: DVD movies, Backwards compatibility and the killer app (GTA). I don't think DVD playback will be as important when the next gen consoles are released.

          I also think there is some truth to Nintendo's logic about it not being a pure game machine. With a DVD player, consumers could then spend their money on movies as well as games, taking potential revenue away from Nintendo. Son
  • The loss of any developer is keenly felt by the platform makers. But in contrast the N64 has a profit margin per console sold compared to the PS2 and Xbox. The push by console makers to compete with PC platforms has only led them to make PC's in the long run. IMO it's better to shell out the cash for the PC and if you want formfactor there are many things out today that are comparable in size to a console system. Keep in mind the PS3 and Xbox2 may actually fail if they cannot generate sales of games to
  • I've been reading a LOT of posts in this discussion that say things bashing 3rd party developers for making crap games which don't sell on the GC... This is simply NOT the case. I recommend you all look at my journal entry, which contains the list of all my currently owned GC games. While about half of them are 1st/2nd party, there's PLENTY of 3rd party games on there, and I love all of them. In fact, I'd have to say my favorite game for the system (excluding Ocarina of Time, which is my fave game of

  • huzzah (Score:2, Funny)

    by lordjabbo ( 704951 )
    Now maybe they'll stop making games for every other system. One can dream, right?
  • Apart from the seriously over Tomb Raider series, remind me what Eidos has released recently.

    Now, if something bad happened to, say, Blizzard I might worry.

    • Exactly!! who gives a sh1t what eidos thinks? to quote: "ts latest Tomb Raider instalment, and unveiled a product line-up for the coming 12 months that includes the ultra-violent Backyard Wrestling: Don't Try This At Home and a game based on the move The Italian Job." anyone give a d4mn about any of these franshises? no. did you look at the eidos financials? they are peanuts compared to the nintendo complex. anyone who honestly thinks that eidos matters one but to nintendo is a non-thinking, momma b00bie-s

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