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Sure it's pretty late in the game to be bringing up console rivalry, but with the recent press release of Nintendo's latest development effort, the Gameboy Advance DS, the voice of those console supporters who never abandoned Nintendo should be heard - or at the very least, shared among each other. It's far too early to jump to conclusions, but I fear, as many Gamecube enthusiasts do, that this news only furthers the notion that Nintendo is shifting its efforts toward the portable gaming industry while its home system market flops on the shores gasping for breath. And in some sense you really can't blame them either; the impressive sales numbers Gameboy and all of its incarnations post month after month, year after year speak louder than all of the rants and raves of lowly gamers such as myself (even if this article makes it to press). So instead of criticizing the motivation behind why Nintendo would remain loyal to its golden egg-laying goose, I intend to look at the why behind the Gamecube not being the console powerhouse it should be.
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Nintendo has had a history of producing quality hardware components, though not without a few misses among the success stories (Virtual Boy, R.O.B, and a whole shopping cart full of strange peripherals come to mind), but as a general rule these failed markets were usually outweighed by the undeniably impressive software support their systems usually flaunted. In the mid 1980's, the NES dominated the home market, literally being credited by many as sparking the renewed interest in home video gaming after Atari had fluttered out of the market place. Amazing first party software began filing out the gate, Super Mario Bros., Zelda, Metroid, Kid Icarus and began mingling with an overwhelming large third party marketplace where the Mega Man's, Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy, and Tecmo Bowl came from. One thing for sure was even though the market saw its share of competitive hardware come and go (many offerings vastly superior technologically to the NES), the software library kept Nintendo on top for many years. This trend continued on up through the ranks of the 16 bit generation. Sega got an early jump and managed to lead the way with their Genesis and some slick marketing of their mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog, but once Nintendo answered with the SNES, it became immediately apparent that the big N must have been pacing itself. Once again, the river of quality first party titles had been unleashed and there was no shortage of excellent third party offerings lining the store shelves from the get go.
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It wasn't until the next generation of console wars that the tides began to turn. Once again, Nintendo got a late jump off the line entering what was dubbed 'the 32-bit generation' a year behind the release of Sony's PlayStation and Sega's Saturn with the 64 bit offering aptly titled the N64. The initial strike against it, as viewed by many, was the fact that Nintendo opted to stick with the expensive and limited storage capacity cartridge medium in a time when the CD-Rom was being reaped of its benefits of increased storage space and reduced cost to produce. This, coupled with Nintendo's strong-willed political views on censorship and target market, led to the departure of many long time developers who opted to transfer their talents to the more liberal-minded Sony, which in turn escalated sales of the PlayStation to stratospheric numbers. However, like always, Nintendo did deliver a pretty steady stream of excellent first party software: Mario 64, Starfox 64, Zelda: Ocarina of Time warranted purchase of the system with developers such as Rare proving they, too, knew the ropes of producing solid games for the N64.
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Alas, we come to the point of all this rambling: the Gamecube. Nintendo's current flagship console system that once again entered the market late (in relation to Sony's PS2) and lags in the department of sheer game library size. Like clockwork (or perhaps calendar work, as the case may be), Nintendo has proven that they are capable of hammering out amazing first party efforts. Unfortunately, as games have become larger and more complex, the frequency has slowed dramatically. It is no longer an option to support a system for one or two solid titles a year; or at the very least, not enough to warrant the Gamecube as your only system. This then points to the third party developers, who are doing a reasonable job in porting over titles that enjoy multi-system success, but aren't supplying a steady enough flow of Gamecube exclusive content, which is ironic considering the vastly superior number of third party developers producing titles for the Gameboy Advance. It seems that, as usual, Nintendo is managing to swell its portable library while its console library sits idle. Skeptics can no longer accuse Nintendo of offering hardware with a technological disadvantage to its competition; in fact with the switch to the optical disk format, load times appear as minimal as ever. You literally can't help but adore the console itself. It's packed with name brand components from the likes of IBM and ATI. It is upgradeable, portable, and comes out of the box ready for 4- player competition. This, coupled with a Zelda collector's game for 99 bucks, it is no surprise that sales figures were off the chart this past Holiday season. So now we can safely conclude the hardware is out there and more than capable of holding its own. Is Nintendo focusing all of its efforts on swaying the momentum in their favor? News of their latest effort in development of another variation of their portable powerhouse can't help but make the most diehard supporters weary. |
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-Jay G. Money, GameVortex Communications AKA Jason Giacchino |
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