The Shrine

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>From Magicbox:

RUMOR: Nekkei news reported that Nintendo may consider launching the GameCube successor in 2005, before both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 2 could come to the market. This move is to secure a larger market share in the next generation market before the competitors.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>Unless they launch with a Mario, Zelda, and Metroid game, it's not gonna be that hot coming out the starting line. Hell most 3rd parties are sick of being burned, and Capcom is definately nulling that RE contract after RE 4.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>As far as I know they don't have any contract.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "Fine Hand"; text-align: left; '>They barely got golf claps when GC launched in Japan. I doubt launching before PS3 and XB2 is gonna help.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Old news, but personally I think it's unnecessary, Yamauchi should take back the company.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Arial; text-align: left; '>Maybe adding DVD and CD capabilities to it may help as well, hmm?</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>They're gonna go "more multi"....in other words, port over some of the "exclusives" other than RE. They'll still make games for the 'Cube first, but they'll be ported over afterwards (like Viewtiful Joe and P.N.03)</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>It'll help immensely, especially if they get a long lead like the PS2 did. They need some time to build their system and launching early helps out</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>CD is nothing but DVD MIGHT help. Of course, by now, most people already have a DVD player</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>No he shouldn't, they're still trying to recover from what he did with the N64</div>

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>You seem to forget the PS2 was got a long lead because it's last system the PSX kicked ass.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>PS2's long lead was a brilliant strategic decision by Sony. They system is EASILY the weakest technologically, but they were able to build their userbase and game library up before Nintendo or Microshaft even had a chance. They won't have that again next round, Nintendo's trying for it</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "Fine Hand"; text-align: left; '>They got to release the PS2 first coz they started the R&D for PS2 before Nintendo or MS did with their current system. Releasing the new Nintendo early is like Sega Saturn's Dreamcast dilemma : too soon.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>The only mistakes Yamauchi ever made in his entire career were using cartidges for the N64 and the Virtual Boy.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Sega Saturn's problem was the high price tag, it was the fastest selling unit at the time of its launch, but when a system like the PSX comes out just weeks later for 200 dollars less, what do you think people are going to buy? The Dreamcast was piracy and lack of marketing due to Sega going broke.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>What ARE you talking about? The PSX was $300 on launch, the Saturn was $400. PS was $350 if you bought Ridge Racer with it.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "Fine Hand"; text-align: left; '>And Sega dropped the price to match as soon as PSX was launched. It was neck and neck until FF7 came out. Also, PSX was plagued by piracy as much as DC. Possibly more so.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>That's what Zeus is talking about fool. :P</div>

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>Well when you have 120 million units world wide and you're being pirated you can live but when you only have 12 million world wide, you got problems. I'm just making numbers up btw.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "Fine Hand"; text-align: left; '>Well, considering my trip to Asia there was not a single legit PSX game I saw. DC was basically an improved version of PSX. =8^)</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Seriously, Nintendo without Yamauchi is like the WWE without Vince McMahon, sure the successors might have success on the wake of the previous owner, but it'll be very limited.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>No way, I bought both systems near launch, Saturn cost me 600 bucks and the PSX cost me 400.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt "Cooper Black"; text-align: left; '>Trivial?!?! A whole system line getting splatted like a fly by Playstation is Trivial?? No, my friend, the N64 sucking is part of the reason why GC is losing to PS2 and will be the reason why Nintendo will never be on top of the console market ever again.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>That's not true at all, it was way ahead more than a year before FF7 was released. Don't you remember Tekken, Wipeout, Ridge Racer, and more than 200 games available? They had 10 million units to Sega's 3 million by the time the N64 was released (about a year before FF7).</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "Fine Hand"; text-align: left; '>Tekken and Wipeout was released 5 months after the PSX debuted. World wide, PSX had a slight edge but it really took off when FF7 was released.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>The N64 proved to be more profitable than the PSX, and also had the top selling games of the generation despight having a userbase of less than half of the PSX. The reason why Sony was able to take the lead in console sales is because they had a much better positioning in the market than Nintendo, more resources to work with for marketing, more money, more influence over the development community (in 94 they kickstarted some huge development houses and also gained support from Namco and Konami which was absolutely huge). By the time the N64 was released they had over 200 games compared to Nintendo's 4 games.

Besides, yes, it's Trivial. Yamauchi is single handedly responsible for the rise of the Videogame industry, and for the existence of Nintendo as a company. Without Yamauchi's genius, there wouldn't have ever been a Nintendo in the first place. Without Yamauchi, Nintendo could have very well gone way of Sega with the N64, but he managed to make the best of the situation and made the N64 even more profitable than its predecessor, the SNES.

Without Yamauchi, what has happened? Gamecube sales have declined, and Iwata sold Rare (a company which Yamauchi had invested a lot into). If you believe that Yamauchi's error in using cartridges for the N64 and developing the virtual boy outweighs all of his success, then I am sorry but I STRONGLY disagree with your warped view.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I don't really remember anyone caring much about FF7 when it was released here, it didn't sell nearly as much as Tekken, Ridge Racer, or Wipeout did.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Certainly not trivial, but considering he also lead the company during its best sucesses, I'd hesitate to blame him.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "Fine Hand"; text-align: left; '>It was HUGE here.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Early, by definition, is early. I think the idea is to not release it late - try to get it out a reasonable time before, or at least around, the others.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>We went over this recently. Seeker doesn't think that FF7 was hyped much.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Eric means American dollars, I hope you mean Canadian. That might account for the difference. (I say "hope" because I hope you didn't pay $600 US for a Saturn.)</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "Fine Hand"; text-align: left; '>I think he's still mad at Square for leaving Nintendo back then. =8^)</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>Heh...that's a laugh. It's the first time an RPG had ever gotten TV coverage or showed up in a frelling Playboy!</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>The PSX required a mod chip. Big difference.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>Again, Canadians should denote their currency with CA$ to prevent confusion.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "Fine Hand"; text-align: left; '>I was watching a boxing match late one night and they had a commercial for FF7! Now....typically it's beer and car/car parts commercials. But an RPG game? Yeah....I was surprised.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I didn't even like Nintendo until Goldeneye came out.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Huge? Please, Starfox 64, GE007, DKR, and other games absolutely crushed it in sales.</div>

<div style='font: 14pt "Times New Roman"; text-align: left; '>I loved the Christmas Pepsi commercial. Santa Claus mashing buttons during a summon was hilarious.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Are you nuts? It sold upwards of 2 million copies. I used to sell those CONSTANTLY in my store...and taht was in 2000</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>GE, SM64, and OoT did, but I'm pretty sure it beat all other N64 games in sales, including Perfect Dark</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Sony really bet the house on that one...and won</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>PSX's success was never based on any single game, which is why they did so well.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>You should use -->( | ) to denote my canadian foot in your ass....</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Not really, it was simply a strategic decision. Remember, PS2 had fuck all at the beginning in terms of decent games. That's why they added the backwards compatibility, which they had to fix from the Japanese model.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>There were a couple of games that were the catalyst to the success. In Japan, it was FF7 that allowed it to overtake the Saturn. Here, it was more of combination of Tekken, RE, and FF7 as the really HUGE titles that set them apart. If it wasn't for those games, they might not be the top selling one</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Also I think it needs to be noted that about 600K (according to Magicbox earlier this year or late last year) of those FF7 sales were for the PC version which would indicate that people weren't really interested in buying a PSX for the purpose of a single game. They wanted to play FF7 and already had a capable PC.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>And that's being generous assuming every single person who bought a FF7 bought a PSX for a FF7. If there was no FF7, it would've taken a bit longer for PSX to pull away, but it would still have done so. PSX had pretty much all the 3rd party on its side while Saturn is limited to a one company show (Sega).</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "Fine Hand"; text-align: left; '>Any news if the next Nintendo console will be backwards compatible?</div>