AfterDawn: Tech news

Nintendo halts GameCube production

Written by Lasse Penttinen @ 11 Aug 2003 12:10 User comments (5)

The Japanese game and console manufacturer is struggling with their flagship gaming machine. According to the source, the product lines are halted until the unsold inventory of built machines is cleared.
The Japanese company Nintendo has temporarily halted production of its GameCube consoles until the autumn.The struggling games maker says it needs to clear its warehouses of unsold machines before it makes any more of them.
Nintendo’s excuse for the lack of market demand is a rather interesting one.
Nintendo's president, Satoru Iwata, has also said he wants to move away from increasingly sophisticated and time consuming games, which dominate the games industry at the moment.
The games market shrunk dramatically last year, Mr Iwata said, because players were getting frustrated with the ever more sophisticated games.In gaming industry discussion the common opinion seems to be the opposite of Satory Iwata’s. Many people consider Nintendo’s game portfolio childish, too simple or lacking variety. People are choosing PlayStation 2 or Xbox due to the more challenging games that are more targeted to the mature gamers. Now it seems that Nintendo is concentrating to the same old niche that has been it’s strongest part always: Simple but fun(?) games.

BBC News

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5 user comments

112.8.2003 05:40

UK GC sales dropped under the 1000 mark this week! Probably because of the heat. On the other hand, has any of the English peopl melted yet?

212.8.2003 10:04

I think they made a big mistake when designing it as a cube, and naming it "gameCUBE". To me, that's a turnoff right from the start. In this day and age of sleek designs, who wants an ugly CUBE? I think the machine is downright ugly and I haven't even considered it past that. Also, because it is(was?) lower priced than the XBox and PS2, one gets the impression that it is less capable than the others. I think almost anyone would spend the extra $50 to get a "more capable" machine. - Bob

312.8.2003 16:33

No way, man. I've always wanted to get the GC, and with games like Wind Waker and Viewtiful Joe, I'm freezing my ass off, shoving ice off other rich guy's lawn to gain that extra 5 dollars! And it' sooo small, and yet the graphics are sometimes even better than the PS2!!! It IS T3H machine. Also I do like the XBOX better than it..... I'm such a hypocritical yet never self conflicting person at times.

412.8.2003 21:33
ABMone
Inactive

yeah im a big xbox fan i like my gamecube but nintendo always lets me down got my n64 and they only made like 50 games on it then cut it off now it looks like gamecube is following the same trend

516.8.2003 02:56
QUAKEDS
Inactive

better than the PS2 nopeeeee no yep but maybe in the futu,,,, they do not call it ps2 now it is called the (media) machineeeeeee psx

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