The Shrine

<div style='font: 12pt Modern; text-align: left; '>From the Magic Box

"Nintendo of America has send letters to various retailers across North America, to discourage them from participating Microsoft's XBox pre-sell promotions. Nintendo felt that Microsoft is not in the gaming business and their promotions would drive away potential buyers from purchasing the next generation console systems."

I mean, I don't care how much money Nintendo says they got in the bank, but this is not something they can beat Microsoft on, by trying to get stores to not participate selling XBox. I mean, if you're Best Buy, would you rather get Nintendo mad and lose your Gameboy/N64 games where you make about $5 per game, or get Microsoft mad and lose like... um... your entire computer hardware section (which is actually quite profitable, since you can get a lot of money out of 'service' stuff like warranty and whatnot)?

Yeah, it sure would turn away potential buyers from purchasing the next gen console systems... turn them away from the Game Cube.

Someone needs to slap some sense into Yamaguchi.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", Modern; text-align: left; '>And what about Sony's forced advertizing?</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Modern; text-align: left; '>Telling retailers "Don't buy XYZ because they suck" is a totally different thing.

Besides, even for advertising, you never want to provoke an opponent into a drawn out advertising war because it just hurts everyone. You're not going continue to pull new gamers from thin air from advertising, so you're always just stealing from the someone else's market share, and if both of you keep on doing this, you end up spending money but can't steal (not meaningful) any real market share.</div>

<div style='font: 14pt Modern; text-align: left; '>Besides it's different than Sony barging in and telling retailers if you put up Xbox promotions, no PS2's for you. Nintendo isn't threatening retailers by saying if you put up Xbox promotional material, no game boy advances for you. Rather, Nintendo is saying that by telling consumers to wait for the X-box, your taking attention and sales away from the present consoles on the market(I'm assuming N64, perhaps the PS2 by getting gamers to wait for something else, and save up money for it and not buy PS2 games), which could be used to help out the ailing industry(don't tell me it's not ailing, every company has been slashing employees lately). Also, if you check out igncube(yes I know they are biased in a heavy way and not great journalism in any way), and the interview they had with NOA's VP of marketing, it clears up some more stuff.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Modern; text-align: left; '>Wasn't on the news sites I go to, and in fact I still don't know what this Sony stuff people are talking about. If it's the stuff about how no PSX2 unless you also buy a bazillion games from Sony, well, they're in the leader position so they can do things like that. They didn't have enough PSX2s to go around, so if you're not a big retailer you better give them a good reason why they should supply you with PSX2s.

PS2 doesn't need Nintendo's help. Last time I went to Best Buy they still didn't have any in stock. Look at the market right now. Sega's not going anywhere. PS2 is still out of stock. PSX is selling less since the system is moving to PS2, so it seems unlikely for them to get any sudden burst of sales. Who stands to gain the most? Nintendo, of course. Gameboy is still doing as good as ever, and since GameCube won't be ready for a long time anyway they'll probably still be developing for it for a good while.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", Modern; text-align: left; '>No, Sony said that "If you want a PSX2, you're going to have to take down ads for the DC."</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", Modern; text-align: left; '>I still don't understand why Sega quit. It's still the best console out in the market.</div>

<div style='font: 14pt Modern; text-align: left; '>The "Sony stuff", is about Sony bullying retailers into saying no X-Box promotions should be shown or else, no PS2 shipments for you. Yea, it's true, and they've been supposedly using deragotory remarks and the like, to get it done.

Besides, yea your right, Nintendo has the most to gain. But, they aren't threatening to not ship any product to the retailers if they don't follow what they are saying. That's the difference, Nintendo is simply spouting stuff with no substance, Sony is bullying.</div>

<div style='font: 14pt "Times New Roman", Modern; text-align: left; '>Great games don't always translate into great sales, unfortunately.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Modern; text-align: left; '>It's impossible to sell a system based on only 1st party games unless it's something that's imbedded into a culture, like Pokemon (even N64 has Rare contributing as a huge developer, and the wrestling games/skateboarding games certainly helped a lot too). No matter how good your 1st party games are, you will need 3rd party support. Quality over quantity simply never works. Look at every successful console franchise. NES, SNES, Genesis, and PSX all have a huge selection games of various quality readily purchasable.

Sega, given their history, simply can't attract the kind of 3rd party support to make Dreamcast competitive. It doesn't matter if Sega pumps out the best games on the face of the planet, the result would've still been the same. You can only sell so many copies of a game based on your ability alone. For the rest, you really need 3rd party to attract other people into buying the system, which in turn leads to them buying your game.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "Arial bold", Modern; text-align: left; '>That was "take down ads for XBox"</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Modern; text-align: left; '>Nah... there were plenty great 3rd party games... I think it was more of a mix of Sega's lackluster advertising/marketing and the evil stigma attatched to the company name.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Modern; text-align: left; '>It was Japan that caused them to fail, they sold like 1 million units there, and 5M+ over here</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Modern; text-align: left; '>I assume you're not talking about the Saturn, since it definitely sold a lot less than the DC here.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt arial, Modern; text-align: left; '>Fuck you</div>