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GameCube (Games) Entertainment Games

Nintendo's Iwata On GameCube Sales, Future Plans 75

Posted by simoniker from the tell-us-what-it-is-already dept.
Thanks to 1UP for its article covering a recent interview with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, in which he discusses "Nintendo's current state and its plans for the future in what will be a critical year for the company." Iwata seems to be confident in Nintendo's "..current target of 6 million GameCube consoles sold worldwide in the current fiscal year, which will conclude in March", and also notes that he believes the China-launched iQue "will grow into a major business in three to five years." Finally, Iwata has comments about the mysterious new Nintendo device due to launch at E3 in May, suggesting he "doesn't necessarily expect this product to be an immediate hit upon its announcement - he's prepared to see a lack of applause from some of the audience."
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Nintendo's Iwata On GameCube Sales, Future Plans More

Nintendo's Iwata On GameCube Sales, Future Plans

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  • Any rumors out there on what the new device is?
    My company recently blocked most gaming-related sites, so I can't check it out myself.
    • Something that will underwhelm the public? Maybe a GameCube mini?
    • I don't believe that any sites are commenting on what it could be. So little detail is given, so they are all taking it very jokingly.

      It is supposed to be something that will unite the GBA and GCN and be a third pillar separate of them. For some reason, I want to say GCN controller that plays GBA games. That way, you can buy one of those and play all of the connectivity games they keep pushing on everyone (not that they don't look fun.. it's just that they're awfully persistent).
    • Can someone mod this parent down? Does anyone have to actually solicit rumors here at slashdot? The very nature of this article means that rumor-mongering is required.
    • "Any rumors out there on what the new device is?"

      I've started my own rumor that they'll release a GC with built in screen. Why's this a big deal? One of the big drawbacks of multiplayer gaming with a console is the splitscreen mode. If each GC had its own screen...

    • Re:Device? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by CashCarSTAR ( 548853 )
      My guess from what I know, is that Nintendo will debut their long announced wireless project.

      In a nutshell, it'll be a wireless device, that will send/receive a signal and create a grid/P2P type network. This will allow almost lag-free gaming across a fairly wide area. It'll be good if you're in a city, for example, and it catches on, you could play against all the locals. Would really catch on if it came with voice chat.
    • Virtual Boy 2.
    • "Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you: The Powerglove... 2!" ::Crickets heard chirping::

      It would be worth it for the sheer humor value.
  • Subject line has a character limit...hmph. Add an E for me.

    Ive heard that it could be some sort of interactive visualboy type remake. The only links I could provide to back that up are slashdot posts joking about a beowolf cluster of them. sorry.

    Also, did anyone else find it interesting that the gentleman talks about the decline of the gaming industry? Seems as though sony is doing ok. kinda like an interal perspective published as a global fact.

    • I thought he said they were doing great outside of Japan, but everything within Japan is experiencing a continuous slump.

      I'm sure Sony America is doing great, but I haven't seen Sony Japan's numbers.
    • Yeah, that line about the decline of gaming seemed a little strange. The gaming industry has grown and grown and worldwide sales are at an all-time high. I don't know what he's talking about.

      It's a little unfortunate that whoever conducted the interview didn't ask him what he was going for by saying that. The video game industry has expanded and expanded and expanded. I don't see a huge recession and I don't see people getting tired of video games and leaving the market entirely. In fact, more people are en

      • I'm pretty sure that he was referring to the Japanese game industry when talking about a decline. Since this is actually just 2 interviews translated and chopped up, it's hard to say whether or not that was clarified, but at the same time since the interviews were conducted in Japanese mags, it's more likely that the context of the interview would be enough to justify the lack of clarification.

        Anyway, the article does state:
        Elsewhere in that same interview, Iwata reiterated his confidence in meeting sales

  • "games have stopped selling"? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by *weasel ( 174362 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @11:55AM (#7974470)
    Game development is deadlocked today. Games have grown in pursuit of more beautiful graphics and more complex systems for 20 years, but that growth is no longer translating into success, and games have stopped selling. The situation won't change if we keep expanding in a conventional way. Instead, we want to offer a gameplay experience which players haven't encountered until now.

    This guy must have shot out of some sort of bizzare-o world. I mean, Nintendo may be having a rough generation, but the rest of the industry seems to be just fine, and the overall numbers are still always better than last year.

    And it also feels just odd to hear the implication, that innovation in games can't continue without their new hardware, from a Nintendo guy.

    It comes off like a suggestion that writers can't continue to churn out new and exciting books without adding whiz-bang 'pop-up' technology.
    • That does sound quite odd. I'd like to hear Miyamoto's opinion on that comment, since he is (in my opinion) one of the greatest innovators around right now.

      But could you imagine if all new and exciting books were pop-up books? That'd be so awesome!
    • This guy must have shot out of some sort of bizzare-o world. I mean, Nintendo may be having a rough generation, but the rest of the industry seems to be just fine, and the overall numbers are still always better than last year.

      You must be looking at EA/Vivendi numbers, who have no problem in releasing the same games every year, with small modifications. If somehow they stumble into some innovation (GTA), they will quickly make the creators release a new edition every year.

      Out of that, every succesful gam

    • Re:"games have stopped selling"? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by xenocide2 ( 231786 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @01:28PM (#7975687) Homepage
      The above poster must have been born out of some bizzare-o world. The publishers (Take Two) of the arguably most popular game in existance (Grand Theft Auto) are under fierce scrutiny from government men in charge of finance, for overstating earnings. Two senior and influential men in the conception of the XBox have left Redmond.

      The most popular online PC games are all in the range of five years old: Halflife with its mods still leads the FPS usage charts, and as I recall, Everquest still leads the way in subscription numbers. Then look at The Sims. Four years after first publication, EA is still pumping out expansions, the one EA way. And they top the charts.

      None of these games are graphical masterpieces. For the most part their continued popularity rests on human interaction. Playing with and against other people in Halflife, forming parties and "guilds" in MMORPGs, and the general gameplay of The Sims. Graphical masterpieces need so many things these days. You need an advanced rendering engine capable of per pixel lighting and shading, high resolution textures, a growing number of levels with a growing level of detail (polys). Fluid character animation, a solid fps, etc. And none of this is directly related to gameplay in general.

      Nowhere in the article is it mentioned that innovation won't happen without Nintendo's stuff. Its just that there's very little reward for pursuing graphical mastery alone anymore. I expect that their new hardware will emphasize human interaction. Perhaps a wireless transmitter/reciever that finds opponents for you when you turn it on. Like those little devices in Japan that are supposed to go off if someone "compatible" with you is carrying one as well.
      • The investigation regarding Take-Two is about a fairly obscure bit of accounting, although it's common to the game industry. You have to understand that in the game industry retail stores are allowed to return unsold merchandise (or get a credit to mark them down). Well more than half the years sales occur in the months of November and December, and game makers would rather have some unsold merchandise returned than run out halfway though black friday. As a result, when game makers book a sale to the sto

    • Re:"games have stopped selling"? (Score:4, Informative)

      by fireduck ( 197000 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @02:10PM (#7976239)
      This guy must have shot out of some sort of bizzare-o world. I mean, Nintendo may be having a rough generation, but the rest of the industry seems to be just fine, and the overall numbers are still always better than last year.

      not true. according to this random article [asahi.com], "Game sales, meanwhile, shriveled 9 percent to 336.7 billion yen." (when compared to the previous year, i presume). Combined with a 33% decline in console hardware sales for the year, mentioned in the article, the video game industry in Japan is going through hard times. Especially relevant given that no new hardware is planned for release for at least another year or 2... (i.e., hardware sales are only going to get worse.)
      • Well, i'd buy that the japanese market is going through a tough time - the entire japanese economy is going through a tough time.

        but there's no evidence that the shrinking market is a function of the hardware restricting innovation.

  • I've heard rumours that it could be an new old-school deck that will play original NES and SNES games or something along those lines.

    For $50 or less I'd buy. Personally, I'd prefer a GB Player style device that connects to the bottom of my GameCube so that I don't have yet another gaming system connected to my TV.
    • Unless its one of those controllers that would have 10-nes games built in, and would work wirelessly to your tv (plug a device into the RCA connectors).

      Then sell mini-carts with 5 NES/1 SNES game on it for $10-$20 and rake in the monye.
    • Planet GameCube [planetgamecube.com] has a bit about how they're re-releasing a mess of old NES games for the Game Boy Advance, as well as producing a new GBA/SP with a color scheme with the old color scheme. It sucks from my point of view, since I spent a lot of time in used game stores and pawn shops this Christmas looking for an old NES for my wife. She loves Super Mario and Dr. Mario.
    • My thought, for a while, has been that it will be a Nintendo online game archive and a player for it. Nintendo keeps flirting with an online strategy, and this is the perfect way of jumping into it.

      The iQue really seems to be the predecessor for such a device. You pay for the player (an internal hard drive, possibly?) and then can download all of those old school games (NES, SNES, GB, GBC, N64) to your GC, paying by the game, not the month. Possibly even have a Nintendo-blessed compact flash cartridge

  • Musings (Score:2, Interesting)

    by TwitchReflex ( 685515 )
    Here's some keyboard quarterbacking, just a couple loosely threaded thoughts.

    If Nintendo did have something that wouldn't smack an audience in the mouth, it would be 50/50 between something Completely Different (abstract hard/software) or Me-Too ("It's a game system, a home media hub, a fondue, AND MORE!"). Personally, the latter would be like Dylan going Electric. Dogs and cats living together, etc.
    The N has had a focus exclusively on making Games, not trying to jam as many tech.swiss army gear into thei

  • Not an immediate success, huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gothic_Walrus ( 692125 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @12:22PM (#7974848) Journal
    One of the things Nintendo is best at is coming up with extremely bizarre products...and then making them work. More than a few of their games and accessories have been innovative but not successful. Then there are the ones that take off and perform very well. A short list...

    ROB The Robot - A robot you can control with your NES? Spiffy! Unfortunately, there was almost no support (two games, IIRC) and he died a quick death

    Game Boy - A portable game console? GASP! Since the Game Boy is still around (now as the GBA), it's fair to say that this one succeeded

    Virtual Boy - Ooh...pretty 3D graphics. It's too bad that they were just red and black, and that the VB caused massive headaches. Still, the idea was nice.

    Kirby's Tilt 'n Tumble - Control Kirby by tilting your Game Boy. Definitely a unique idea, but the game wasn't exactly a hit.

    e-Reader - The ability to add things to GBA games cheaply (buy a $3 pack of cards) is nice, but there hasn't been very much support. Thankfully, that appears to be changing.

    That's just what came to mind at the moment. We've got to remember that most of Nintendo's biggest successes - Mario, Zelda, Pokemon - were completely unlike anything else out there at the time of their release.

    I've got a feeling that this will be another one of Nintendo's gambles...a completely wild idea that might or might not succeed. We'll see in a few months...

    Come to think of it, this situation reminds me of another famous company...

    Nintendo: the Apple of gaming.

    • e-Reader... ugh... can't they make it smaller? I don't care to lug around a adapter device that's almost he size of my SP.

      I personally just wish Nintendo would put together a serious release schedule of porting the clasic SNES titles to the GBA. It's obvious that it can be done and it's being done towards critical and financial success but only in short order. We needz more!

      Where are my copies of Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy stuff, Secret of Mana, Super Mario Kart, Star Fox, Metal Gear
      • Chrono Trigger, Super Metroid, FF2/3... portable...
        drool....
      • Nintendo CAN'T release most of the games you listed - Chrono Trigger, the Final Fantasy series, and Secret of Mana are all Square titles Metal Gear is a Konami game, and Street Fighter II is a Capcom game that has actually already been released for the GBA. Nintendo doesn't own those games and therefore can't release them.

        As for the other games...Metroid Fusion and Mario Kart Super Circuit are basically sequels to their SNES forebearers, and we might get Star Fox someday...

        • Yes, yes, we all know that Nintendo can't publish a game they don't own. But, my point was that Nintendo can work with the companies to get these games released for the GBA.

          You would think that all Nintendo would have to do is to point to the sales figures of the already released SNES games and it would be a no-brainer. Especially with the release of the SP opening up the market to include the 30ish crowd who wouldn't be seen dead with one of the original GBA devices.

          As far as Street Fighter II being re
    • One of the things Nintendo is best at is coming up with extremely bizarre products...and then making them work.

      At first, I had to check your list there to see if it was a list of things that didn't work. They all are, save the GB. More importantly, many of those things are items from the golden age of Nintendo. The e-reader is more recent, but compared to what they were churning out prior (add the powerglove to your list, the Mario mouse, the exercise pad) most of these are from years ago. Nintendo i
    • ROB The Robot was an ingenious marketing strategy. The gaming crash caused by Atari made people reluctant to have anything to do with video games. ROB allowed Nintendo to advertise it as a toy, not a video game. When the system became a success Nintendo dropped it.
    • They also had the glove, the gun (and that appaling bazooka thingy for the snes), and correct me if i'm wrong, were the first with a dancing mat like peripheral. In my opinion, Nintendo has always been the most innovative one (for home consoles).
  • What he said reminded me of the attitude they had about the Virtual Boy, and while I love playing that occassionally my self, thats only because I got it and most the games for a tiny pittance in a bargain bin.
  • Finally, Iwata has comments about the mysterious new Nintendo device due to launch at E3 in May, suggesting he "doesn't necessarily expect this product to be an immediate hit upon its announcement - he's prepared to see a lack of applause from some of the audience."

    It's the Virtual Boy 2!

    Rob (Now with green LEDs)
  • "Neither a console nor a hand-held?" "Not expected to see rounds of applause?"

    Must be the next Virtual Boy! [virtual-boy.org]
  • Fatbabies speculative post here [fatbabies.com]. Company press release here [gyration.com].
  • He doesn't necessarily expect this product to be an immediate hit upon its announcement - he's prepared to see a lack of applause from some of the audience

    Not even him thinks the product will be impressive! considering other "novelties" nintendo has delivered before (e-card reader, virtual boy, 4 player pacman ) I dont think thats a good sign come on! even Nokia thought the N-gage would be really cool (yeah right). If thats what they think maybe they should just do themselves and us a favor and cancel i

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