The cubic console of Nintendo It is remembered with enough nostalgia by many nintenderos, even some consider it the last "true" console of the Big N. It was born as an ambitious project to stand up to the almighty PlayStation 2 and along the way he ran into a new competitor, Xbox.
In this special, we review the possible triggers that led to GameCube to be the desktop console of Nintendo least sold in its life cycle.
GameCube housed in its entrails a CPU of IBM, known as Gekko, and a GPU ati jointly developed by Nintendo y ArtX, endowing the machine with technical capabilities that placed it above what Nintendo had as its main competitor: it was enough to see games like Metroid Prime, Rogue Squadron II o resident evil -even the port of the fourth part looked better in the cube than in PS2- to realize this.
However, the great threat to Nintendo was Microsoft with its entry as a console manufacturer, in a rapidly growing video game sector that captured the greedy attention of those in Redmond, and we already know how it spends them Microsoft. While the Xbox got ahead of GameCube in raw power, leaving the console Nintendo in the middle, above PS2, but still far from the level of Xbox. This, although it seems silly, has its importance: many games were made based on PS2 being the best-selling platform, while many others took Xbox as a benchmark console due to its similarity to PC, and in fact, this machine received quite a few ports of compatible games.
Another thorny issue was the optical support used for the console. At the time, Nintendo openly recognized that the cartridge format for Nintendo 64 it was all a mistake and that the mini DVDs made by Panasonic for GameCube they would not be an obstacle for developers. Well, what happened is that the capacity of these discs was clearly insufficient (1,50 GB) and resulted in games that arrived on more than one mini DVD and large amounts of data had to be compressed, thus affecting the own audio and video quality. Arguments were also used to defend this format, such as that many young children were going to use the console and that this disc size was ideal for them, that it was not necessary to resort to occupying all the GB of a DVD to make a good game or that Nintendo should be protected from piracy (which they did not prevent: although more spectacular than in PS2 o Xbox, backups could run on consoles GameCube modified, and as we all know, with Wii their pulse did not tremble to choose DVD as the format and the levels of piracy in this system were very alarming)
The family or even children's brand image also seems to have been pernicious for the console (although to be fair, there were games for all ages, from Ty: The Tasmanian Tiger until the resident evil). It should also be noted that GameCube He was late to the party: in Japan it was put on sale in September 2001, it would do the same in November in the US and, finally, until May of the following year we could not enjoy the machine in Europe, and by then, Xbox had already landed in all territories, while PlayStation 2 It already did so throughout 2000 (March in Japan, October in the US and November in Europe)
The sales of the console, and its distribution -both for machines and games, being especially bad in Spain-, did not help either: despite the reduced price of GameCube compared to the competition, the desired effect was not achieved, and let's remember that the console went from € 199 to € 99, when Xbox came out to 480 euros with a subsequent reduction to 300, and only 21 million were sold GameCube versus the 24 that the machine got Microsoft, and of course, being far from the more than 155 that it has achieved PS2. This also resulted in the lack of support from studios and companies to GameCube: there were somewhat orphaned genres and a multitude of games that came out in PS2 y Xbox they did not see the light in the machine Nintendo.
Another factor, although perhaps some point it out as anecdotal, was that the console lived in a time of transition of power in itself. Nintendo: the historical Hiroshi Yamauchi yielded the presidency to the current Satoru Iwata, which they say did not pay much attention to Game Cube, since he was more focused on the future plans of the company.
As we can see, the handicaps of GameCube- Arrived late, there was poor distribution of consoles and games, many companies did not support the console properly, the mini DVD format was a mistake, the children's console bias, and the internal transition of power from Nintendo They hit hard on a console that was born raising quite a lot of expectations and from which the mistakes of its predecessor were not expected to be repeated: in the end, GameCube turned out to be a bigger disaster than Nintendo 64, as only 21 million consoles were sold compared to 33 of the 64 bits.
We already know that although success does not accompany it, it does not necessarily mean that quality games did not exist: Super Smash Bros, The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, the saga resident evil (with that incredible remake and the exclusive Resident Evil 0), Viewtiful Joe, Metal Gear Solid The Twin Snakes, the two deliveries of Metroid Prime, Pikmin, Baten Kaitos, Eternal Darkness, Mario Kart Double Dash, Geist, Wario World, Wario Ware, the Mario Party saga, Soul Calibur 2 (With Link as an exclusive character), Luigi's Mansion, Tales of Symphonia, Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles, Fire Emblem, Star Fox Adventures (the last set of Rare for a desktop console of Nintendo), Paper Mario: The Millennial Door, Mario Smash Football, F-Zero GX, Donkey Kong Jungle Beat o PN 03 are examples of the great catalog of GameCube, some of these games even being relaunched for Wii, but that, friends, is another story.