The Shrine

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>The new F-Zero game looks fucking tight!</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Something about Nintendo going the path of Sega. Not very likely, first of all, Nintendo is more profitable than SCE, and has been for the last 4 and a half years. Nintendo has the resources to develop new consoles, box top or whatever, it doesn't matter, they also have a great partnership with Panasonic/Matsushita. Sega was over a billion dollars in debt, it required that they sell nearly all of their factories and exit the hardware industry, it also required that President Isao Okawa donate $695 million dollars US to the company in order for it to survive (he could have bought just about any other videogame company for that price).

These "experts" were most likely biased in their opinion, there is absolutely no indication that Nintendo is going in that direction, Sega wouldn't have made the move that they did if they were in a better state. The reason why I knew several months in advanced was not because of Industry speculation from "experts", it was because Sega themselves were discussing it as a possible option since their company would have had to fold otherwise; of course I got flamed for it even though it was the truth.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>The "experts" are referring to the direction the industry is headed, which may not leave any room for a traditional console. So, Nintendo either has a bitch deal with Matsushita or they get bought out. Either way, they become a developer</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>12M+ Gamecubes have shipped (Nintendo announced that fairly recently), by this time during the N64's life Nintendo had only shipped 5 million in North America and 2-2.5M in Japan. Perhaps the experts know something I don't, who knows. But I don't think the industry would be any different currently if Sony made a strait up console and sold it for 100 bucks, in fact, I'd say that by now 65 million PS2's would have sold if Sony started off with a $200 US console and moved it down to $100-$150 US later on. The PS1 has sold millions and millions since the release of the PS2 which is evidence that supports my theory on the price. Also, the Xbox which is the most advanced console has only sold about 70% as well as the Gamecube (the next best seller) so far even though an enourmous amount of resources have been put into its marketing. So perhaps whether it is a box-top or a Gaming Console isn't really a factor in sales.

It's all just speculation, also there isn't really anything stopping Nintendo from developing their own box-top sets, or whatever, they have stated such on several occaisions, and also stated on those occaisions that they developed this console specifically for games. Nintendo is still more profitable than any other videogame company in the world.

The "experts" made a comparisson to the Sega situation, the comparisson is flawed, since one company is the most profitable company in the business, and the other was over a billion dollars in debt.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Too many ifs for the conclusion to have any relevance.</div>