Hochiminh’s Rant Day 20

This is in response to the 4-page “Reggie to Rumble” article in July’s issue of Nintendo Power, which I finally received yesterday. I read the informative article, but some of his answers I don’t entirely agree with.

NP asked: Why do you think the Gamecube finished third in the North American home-console race? Reggie responded that their was two key reasons, one being the first-and third party games near launch weren’t strong (wrong) and there was a big gap within the first year of Gamecube’s launch (wrong again). Let’s look back, shall we?

I was the first at Target to buy a Gamecube at launch. I got a sheet with 7 launch Gamecube titles (that’s quite a bit). A baseball game, All-Star Baseball 2002, Super Monkey Ball, NHL Hitz 2002, Madden 2002, Rogue Squadron 2, Wave Race: Blue Storm, and Luigi’s Mansion. All different genres. Then a week to week and a half later, they had Crazy Taxi, Dave Mirra BMX 2, Extreme-G 3, Disney’s Tarzan, Batman: Vengeance, FIFA 2002, SSX Tricky, Tony Hawk 3, then December had Super Smash Bros. Melee, Pikmin, The Simpson’s: Road Rage, NFL QBC 2002, and Universal Studios: Theme Park. And I know I even missed a few. So there were 20-25 quality titles in a 5 week span from November 18th to December 31st, 2001. I bought 6 of the 7 launch titles, AND SSX Tricky, Dave Mirra, Tony Hawk 3, The Simpsons: Road Rage, and Super Smash Bros. Melee. That’s at LEAST half of the titles, all in which were completely EXCELLENT. The Gamecube’s best titles came out at and around launch!

Now, look at the next year. I remember a two-and-a-half page release list from Gamestop for the Gamecube. 2002 had the most games that ever came out for Cube! Plus, most of the best games came out that year. The following years had substantially less games.

I think the less games after 2002 is what caused Gamecube’s downfall, plus the lack of online play and third-party games later on. Moreover, Gamecube was in second place when it first came out. It beat XBox initially for at least a year after (which proves my theory of more games on the Gamecube in 2002 than XBox.)

Even further back, I bought the N64 at launch, and it only had 9 games in a 3-month span. I bought it on Sept 29, 1996. Only 2 launch titles, Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64, then Wayne Gretzky in early October, Wave Race 64 in early November, Mortal Kombat Trilogy in mid-November, Killer Instinct Gold in late November, Shadows of the Empire in early December, Cruis’N USA in mid December, and NBA Hang Time in late December. Now THAT was a poor launch! And the N64 did NOT have a lot of titles, especially compared to the Cube’s, which had substantially better games.

Secondly, Reggie mentioned “creating barriers” about people copying Nintendo’s strategies. I would like to knoe what these barriers are. Sony ALREADY copied Nintendo’s motion-sensing idea, and they copied everything else. C’mon people; anybody who doesn’t believe this has been living under a rock. In my humble opinion, there REALLY isn’t any barriers that can be created to block other developers to steal ideas. Unfortunately, it happens, and its ALWAYS from Nintendo. Sure, they are doing online now, but about 5 years late. Look how quickly Sony took Nintendo’s motion idea. It’s ridiculous!

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