Eidos stops supporting Gamecube
 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFr...804554,00.html

I think the article could have found better games to reference than Backyard Wrestling and Italian Job. Timesplitters 3 is being published by a new publisher, so that might still be on Gamecube. Hitman 3 looks doubtful though...

That's what happens when you never truly support a console in the first place. Eidos not developing for Nintendo isn't a blow because besides hitman 2 which was *late* anyhow and Timesplitters 2 they haven't released anything worth a damn on the system. I'm getting sick of these damn companies blaming Nintendo for their own software sales. It's their fault for putting out crappy products in the first place.

Does this mean no more Tomb Raider games for the Cube? Gawd, I hope so.

First Acclaim and now Eidos!! The Gamecube's overall library quality score is going to jump 2 or 3 whole points now!

It is interesting how some companies treat their cube products as an afterthought, and then are suprised that they don't do well.

Be fair now... once every millenium or so, Eidos comes up with a good game, whereas Acclaim never did ;).

But yeah, it is stupid of Eidos to blame Nintendo when they never cared in the first place.

Certainly, these two are not the giants of publishing, but it is beginning to look like a trend. Don't forget Sega Sports as well. When third party developers start bailing, it's not a good sign This is the same problem they had with the N64.

I'm sorry, but if crappy companies are pulling out, I'm not sweating it. once good companies decide to pull out I'll start worrying.

What problem they had with the N64, they didn't have companies like Eidos and Acclaim crapping out dozens of turds every years? Nintendo still has strong support of 3rd parties that make GOOD games.

I think Im behind on who is developing for GC right now. Did Sega Sports end up bailing? Dont know since I dont care much for sports game to begin with. If they did, I wouldnt count Sega Sports as a crappy company, thats kind of a big boy to lose.

I agree. Nintendo certainly doesn't want the Gamecub to be a "niche" console and the less games it gets, the more it gets closer to being a niche console. Doesn't matter that those games they lost suck.

I would be more worried if Sega pulled out everything. But to just lose the sports side...meh. I know some around here enjoy sports game son their GC, but I use the Xbox for that, and I believe most gamers own 2 consoles, or have ready acces to a different one than they own.

so all the owners of gamecube don't care? and think that it's actually good for companies (especially crappy ones) to quit supporting their console?

They only care about their Marios and Zeldas... ;)

Owning a GC, I can say that I don't care. I didn't buy any of their games before for the GC, so my only concern is the "impression" it gives.

Certainly Sega is still a big, important developer for the GC, and missing out on games like ESPN Football may not bother folks much, but it's another sign of struggle : Multi-console games tend to sell far fewer copies on the GC than the other systems. The comparative sales numbers of the Sega Sports games were startling; they just didn't move on the GC at all. Now part of that fact, I'm sure, is due to the large memory space requirement for season saves on sports games, but that may be perceived as a flaw with the system. The perception is out there; it's in the article above "Nintendo's struggling system". If more and more third party developers look at sales numbers and see very low GC sales numbers, they're not going to want to continue to develop for the system.

There are two sales figures I'd like to see:
How many Splinter Cell copies were sold on the GC vs the PS2, since the port was released at the same time as the PS2 and way after the Xbox. I didn't hear much about the GC version as opposed to the heavily advertised PS2 one.

Sales numbers of Soul Calibur 2, since that is a port that one would expect people might choose to buy on the GC even if they owned multiple systems.

Comparing Splinter Cell's sales between PS2 and Gamecube is not a fair comparison since the PS2's user base is so much larger than the Gamecubes. Compare it to Xbox's user base instead since it's similar to the cubes.

I wouldn't be suprised if Soul Calibur 2 sold more on GC compared to Xbox.

Well that's not fair either since it was an Xbox game ported to the cube. If however sales on the GC were miserable, then you'd understnad why Ubi Soft or other developers would shy away from future ports.

Quote:

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I wouldn't be suprised if Soul Calibur 2 sold more on GC compared to Xbox.

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I wouldn't either, in fact I expect it. I'd like to see the actual numbers, though.

BTW Is there a good source for finding game sales numbers? It's ironic that people are saying that video gaming is now a bigger business than the movies, yet sales numbers tend to be so secret.
I for one would love to know how that last Tomb Raider sold a million copies. Poor suckers, I bet most of them bought Enter The Matrix as well.

I know at my store, we got in 20 Soul Caliburs for each system. As of writing we have 1 for GameCube left, 5 for Xbox, and 12 for PS2...

Also, who would buy Sports games on Gamecube OR PS2 if you own an Xbox. Sports games take up SO much room on a memory card, and atleast with an Xbox you have a Hard drive.

I agree.. people who play sports games have a PS2 or an Xbox.. that's just the way it is.

I'm not suprised at your sales numbers, especially with those PS2's flaming and exploding all the time in your store. ;)

Seriously, the memory card issue was a factor, but at least Sony's card is big enough to accomidate a few games. I agree the hard drive is the way to go, but certianly Sony's memory card isn't frightening people away from the PS2 version of Madden 2004.

I don't think that Soul Calibur 2 is really representitive of the GC's viability in the multi-console market. The inclusion of Link returns that game to the "specialty" neiche as much as if it were a first-party game. Maybe I'm not explaining myself properly (and I don't think I am), but Link's inclusion really throws off the sales numbers. It was a brilliant move on Namco's part, but it shouldn't be representative of anything except the loyalty of Nintendo fans.

NPD publishes data regularly. I don't know of a place online that has that data publicly available, but it often winds up on message boards shortly after it's posted wherever. They're often a few weeks behind, or at least, they are when they start making the rounds.

The July numbers are out, but I've only seen excerpts.

FWIW, the GameCube version was the only one I remember seeing print/television ads for.

I think those June numbers say a lot about why people buy Gamecubes. Only one of the top ten games is third party, and it's a game not available on Xbox or PS2 (Sonic Adventure 2).

The fact of the matter is that very few households have the Gamecube as their only console. It's usually alongside a PS2, an Xbox, or both.

I was first worried about this drop in support, because I'm a Timesplitters fan. Luckily Free Radical just jumped ship on Eidos to work with a "multiplatform publisher."

I've seen the Xbox commerical for Soul Calibur 2.. featuring Spawn. Of course, I only saw that ONCE and the GC one a bunch of times.

Tomb Raider is good if you like adventure and exploring.

NPD is indeed on the web. Here's a link to their video game section:

July game sales can be found here

Damn, the links don't work and the board won't let me edit the post for some reason or quote others. (Any idea why?)

Anyway, let's try this again... :)

NPD game section:
http://www.npdfunworld.com/funServle...age=index.html

NPD July game sales:
http://www.npdfunworld.com/funServle...content_id=448

Hmm. That's just a ranking, though. I'd like to see some sales numbers. Like I said, I find it strange that more money is spent on video games than moive tickets, but you can usually find out by Sunday morning how much money a film is going to make and even a month after its release, it's still hard to find out how many copies a hit game has sold.

This is a really bad trend with the GC that makes it less and less appealing to Joe Shmoe buyer in Best Buy or Circuit City. Now will they buy a system that has a wall full of games, many of which are $20 or under, or will they buy a GC that has not so many games and pitiful 3rd party support that is getting worse by the day?

Honestly, I wish Nintendo the best as a company since they put out a solid product (Mario Kart looks awesome) but they really have a funked up business model. PSone proved that consumers want quantity almost as much as quality. We like choice. There were tons of high quality games on PSone, but the vast majority were mediocre.... but the important point is that there were tons of games of every genre imaginable.

The cool thing about having an installed base the size of Sony's is that the software publisher can take risks with wacky, outlandish games (Mr Mosquito, Parappa the rapper, Karaoke revolution, ICO, Intelligent Cube etc) and even if they sell to a fraction of the audience, they'll still turn a profit. Not to say there aren't innovative and different games on the GC, but there are far less small publishers making games for the console.

Anyway, the point of my rambling rant is that somebody at Nintendo corporate HQ better have a good idea where all this is going otherwise the next wave of consoles launched (PSP included) wont be pretty for them.

If I were a Nintendo exec, what would really upset me is that their market hasn't really expanded past it's initial fan base. It's still viewed by many as a "kid's console" (certainly the GC design didn't do much to change that). Even their excellent first party games never really created the huge awareness and "buzz" among the general population that, say, Halo or GTA received. They certainly have a loyal fan base, but I don't think they were ever really able to broaden it enough. I wonder for how many people was Wind Waker their first Zelda game, how many had never bought a Metroid game before Prime or a Mario game before Sunshine?

BTW I don't think that their handheld division has anything to worry about from the PSP. They have that market pretty well wrapped up.

Strange, all I ever see are TV spots for the PS2 version. I wonder if they are somehow tailored to the demographics in specific areas.

That's the same thinking that got them slammed in the last 2 generations.

Nintendo needs to wake up and stop losing market share.

The GC was the first console of the current gen that I bought, but I picked it up for the RE series and then picked up some other games.

Nintendo is profitable, but they will not be able to just continue as they have and stay that way into the future.

At my store the GC version of SCII sold best of the 3, but Xbox was a close 2nd. The PS2 version hasn't sold very many at all.

any1 else think its funny how every time gc loses a developer/publisher all the ninny fanboys rush out to say things like "its ok, they sucked anyway!!!!". LOL!!!!! gc is clearly on the downhill slide outside of japan, which is fine, cause then i can pick up some games at sub $5 levels when they all get cleared out. :hump:

j

Thanks for stating the obvious. :up:

Are you seriously suggesting that Eidos and Acclaim were decent developers?

the fact that they have been in the game as long as they have proves that they have their fans and that they sell lots of games. Are you seriously suggesting that losing these fans/games is a good thing for gc? it makes a great fanboy soundbite to say 'we're better off with out them damn it!!!' but from a business point of view for the gc, its a laughable comment at best, fanboy idiocy at worst. I dont care how bad the software is, if it sells, losing it is bad for a console.

j

But the software wasn't selling, that's why the developers got out. Pushing bad games onto a console that nobody is buying doesn't help anybody.

Well, my point is that it's the number of unitssold that's important regardless of quality. Turok was drek on the PS2, Xbox and GC, but it wasn't any worse on the GC than the others (how could it have been?). NFL 2k3 was a pretty great game on all systems, but didn't sell at all on the GC (though of course Madden trounced it on all 3 systems). It sounds weird to say, but quality doesn't really enter into the equation when you're comparing the same game on multiple consoles. And even though there are fewer GCs than Xboxes, even figuring in the difference in units, the GC tends to sell far fewer games. I'm afraid that the GC is relegating itself to be a platform for Nintendo and a few interesting Sega games and maybe the occasional Star Wars title. Nintendo's dubious decision to emphasise connectivity with the GBA over online capability further solidifies their rep as a nostalgia act out of touch with the future of gaming and only interested in their own in-house titles and ports of previous console hits (Resident Evil, MGS, Sonic Adventure).
Developers are recognizing that people just aren't buying multi-platform games for the GC in large enough numbers. Since it requires expense to port a title to the system and then more to market the games, I'm sure many are hesitant to bring a title over as the chance for significant profit is seen as small. I'd guess you'll see more and more third-party titles come out on the PS2 and Xbox first and maybe later on the GC as an afterthought or not at all.