I get tired of that statement. They definitely blew it with the N64, but the Cube is much easier to develop for, if you have some current facts to back up the statement I'd love to hear them. Besides how many lousy third party games is enough? The really good games generally make it to all the systems. If we want to talk about exclusives then XBox and PS2 can't hold a candle to the Nintendo exclusives (IMHO). All the systems definitely have a few key exclusives though, and I'm not trying to argue they don't. I bought a PS2 so I could play Kingdom Hearts, and KOTOR (which I've resisted thus far) is probably the first XBOX game I'll really sit down and play (I won an XBOX 2 years ago, played it for about 3 hours total).

Obviously Nintendo isn't sincere about online gaming, everyone knows that at this point (isn't that the whole point of this thread?). They have nothing to convince anyone about, on the flip side, maybe the third party developers need to convince Nintendo that it's in Nintendo's best interest.

An unscientific count of games shows that XBOX has a total of 525 games to the GameCube total of 454 games. (PS2 has 1026). I suppose you could argue that there isn't any support but that number isn't all that staggering. At some point the quality of third party games isn't worth the $5 clearance price, and we're probably already there anyway.
Count's pulled from (not very scientific, but I figure it's close enough):
http://www.cheatingdome.com/Xbox/allgames.htm
http://www.cheatingdome.com/gcube/allgames.htm
http://www.cheatingdome.com/psx2/allgames.htm

[B}Sorry to upset you, but read the latest EGM or Gamepro for E3 coverage( I can't remember which one) but, under the E3 summary for Nintendo it was stated that third party support for the GC was weak, I'm not saying that First party is weak, matter a fact it's great.[B]



Problem with this statement no third party developer will try to dictate development policy for a console maker.
first and foremost this has to be dictate by the console maker. Beside if any group has that control its the consumer.




I also took a unscientific game count that show the GC with a count of 458, the Xbox with a count of 670, the Ps2 with a count of 1078. I kinda expect the Ps2 to have a larger count since it was on the market first. How do you explain the fact that the Xbox has a larger count when the Gc and Xbox were released at the same time? Yes, 3rd party games can suck, but so can some first party games.

http://www.allxbox.com/games/
http://www.allps2.com/games/
http://www.allcube.com/games/
Total all games in Categories.

WRT the mmorpg thing appealing to only a minority - take Lineage for example... in Korea, this game has over 4 million subscribers who pay monthly. That's more people paying a monthy fee for one game than most individual game (console or PC) sales. I mean that's almost half the number of people who bought an Xbox or Gamecube.

Look - I don't deny that it's not yet profitable for consoles... it'll get there though eventually. At this point, it's almost foolish for game developers not to take advantage of it since the console companies are the ones losing money right now. I have a feeling that a killer app like Halo 2 on Live could potentially double the number of Live subscribers and likely boost xbox sales. Just because Live isn't directly profitable, it may become so indirectly... attracting developers, attracting new console buyers who will in turn buy more games, building a loyal customer base. Nintendo games going online would be huge I think given the style of gameplay.

The fact is - online gaming isn't going away - its not a fad. It's only going to get bigger and bigger - ignoring it is a mistake no matter how you look at it. Nintendo can 'wait and see' if they like - and I totally see the logic of skipping it this generation at this point, but to ignore it for their next gen is a bad move.

Not upset at all, I just don't agree with it, I think there are plenty of 3rd party games, not as many as the other systems, but plenty. More for your argument is the coming soon pages from the sites you gave (Q3 only):
PS2 65, XBox 46, Cube 28

This would lend to the statement obviously. PS2 total games is definitely not a fair comparison with their headstart, but ongoing releases is interesting. The PS2 and XBox pages seem to share a lot while the Cube is off in it's own world of games.

So in the end I'll agree that the 3rd party support isn't there I guess, but the third party games that are there are good enough for me. If only I had more time I'd get a chance to play some of them...

As for third party dictating policy to Nintendo I completely agree, won't happen. I don't think they really need to dictate anything though. As long as the new system supports Broadband and Nintendo doesn't have to front the money for a global network a third party developer could make their own server to support their game online. I don't think it will happen though.

Oh boy, here we go again!

Ninetendo is teh d00m3d cuz teh dont supp0rts 0nline gamez!

Seriously though, I don't play online games as I don't really have time for them, I applaud Nintendo for not jumping on the bandwagon this gen. Their E3 showing was awesome. Online console games is a genre that is still in its infancy, most of them are just PC FPS ports or sports games that I would rather play on my PC for free anyway. I haven't seen anything that really blows me away and makes me want to invest in anything online yet anyway.

I wish I had more time to play, then I might actually give online gaming a try. It seems like a committment and something I would get hooked on (leading to divorce and worst father of the year award). My brother-in-law plays on Live and it would be fun to try, he does tend to play the Splinter Cell type games though and I'm not really into those. I'll admit that if Nintendo had it I would probably give it a shot if they had the right game. Only 13 more years until the kids are out of High School....