I had my first console at age 2 (an Atari 2600), and I just turned 27, so I'm not 'easily into my thirties now'!

I own a Gamecube, and I have a few of the titles listed as cute. In fact, the game I'm currently playing is Animal Crossing: Wild World on the DS. But, even though I enjoy and play some of the games, I sometimes feel a bit awkward buying them at stores. The games, while fun, are usually marketed directly towards children, and that's a shame.

I think the bad reflection for people not buying Zelda or Mario games is not on the gamers or gaming in general, but instead on Nintendo. It wouldn't be hard at all to market the games in a more neutral stance, rather than telescoping onto a certain demographic that, in turn, alienates "mature" gamers.

While I hope things change, I don't see it happening anytime soon with the Wii.

The second they come out with this, I will finally feel Game Fullfilled... I have been waiting for this since Mario Party 1... It just seemed so logical to do this

I think the DS has a far more interesting line up than the gamecube ever had. Over in Japan, the success of the ds is mainly due to the love of the brain training software. Also there's an english teaching title that seems rather popular. On the flip site, the kids seem to love their naruto and other anime franchises on the DS. In fact over half the kids in my classes seem to own a DS (nice of their parents). I've seen ONE psp outside of a store since coming to Japan.

I can only answer my own opinions here but:
-Nintendo sticking to proprietary hardware (carts with N64 and their disks for cube) vs going dvd hurt sales a lot.
-As I recall it was 3rd to market in a 3 horse race.
-Personally there were zero games on cube that weren't on the other systems and when given the choice the graphics/sound/internet options are always the same or better on xbox than either other system.
-Personally the controller was too small such that it was uncomfortable.

So from my view point the only selling point to the cube was kids games. Otherwise why would you want one?

What I wouldn't give to have a game that ditched the water pack, and just gave us like a 100 of those mini levels. Those were AWESOME! I never bought that Sunshine wasn't a good game. It wasn't what I wanted, and not my favorite Mario experience, but when I was playing that game I was really into it. Outside of the mini levels, I had a lot of fun chasing the evil twin.

Y'know I think I might play through this again. See if I don't like it more now that I know what it's about.

It came out 5 days or so before the X-box. Both a year after the PS2.

Uh? The Cube came out after the Xbox.

But the mini-levels were there and they were absolutely brilliant IMO. And I know the backpack was a departure, but just try and tell me that the rocket pack shooting Mario hundreds of feet in the air onto wires or towers wasn't monstrously cool. The pack didn't limit Mario in any way, and it allowed him to do some really interesting stuff. The pack actually sort of reminds me of what they did with Princess Peach on the DS.

Recommended.

I think I kind of felt like you do about the pack at first, and I put Mario down about 2/3 of the way through to play Wind Waker and then Metroid Prime...when I got back to Mario and started over, I found that I had sort of accepted the pack and that it was actually pretty interesting since it allowed the action to happen in a much more vertical way.

It came out three days after the XBox, according to Wikipedia. In North America, at least.

I had it backwards, at any rate, the point was the x-box and Cube came out the same week, so launch date wasn't a factor in finish third. Maybe a factor in finishing behind Sony though.

* You have no shot at first in North America if you are the clear #3 choice for the most popular genre in gaming: sports.
* Another important genre, RPGs, was largely stolen away by Sony.
* The FPS genre was claimed by Microsoft.
* M-rated action games? Few and far between.
* Racing games? When I think of Gamecube, F-Zero and Mario Kart immediately come to mind. What else? There's another lacking genre.

With all these pillars knocked down, how could they possibly have won?

I read on a forum (don't think it was this one) where someone said whoever has Square wins the console war. So far that's been true.

Or does square go to the console most likely to win?

I don't think the RPG market is quite as robust as folks seem to think it is.

Pretty much the same way the SNES beat the Genesis, which was better for sports games, better for fighters (big at the time like FPS now), and better for racing games.

The SNES did have better RPGs though.

The genesis wasn't better for Fighters outside of MK1. MK2 was vastly superior on the SNES, and the Street Fighter games weren't even on the Genesis for a long time (and again was an inferior version).

The SNES had good sports games too, just didn't have the Sega sports games. Still had the EA games, Ken Griffey Baseball etc. So it wasn't that bad off in that regard, though the genesis did have the edge. I don't recall sports games being nearly the rage back then as they are today either.

Yeah, fighting games generally don't tax the processor the way shooters or sports games do. The larger color pallette of the SNES helped those games look nicer.

The problem with the sports games is that it took EA some time to get the sports games working good on the SNES (the first Madden had an awful framerate, and the second one was still somewhat choppy). By the time they got it down, the Genesis had the momentum as the system for sports games.

Don't forget that the button layout for the SNES was terrible for fighting games and that MK1 was all the rage back then. My recollection is that Sega had the edge.

Again, perhaps it was just perception, but at the time, I recall the Genesis being the console for sports.

Really it's neither here nor there as the poster above was largely correct about the Cube not having the edge in key genres. I guess when it comes down to it, you buy a nintendo console to play nintendo games. But in this case...and with the N64, I felt that the Nintendo console was built better and had a better controller...so I found it hard to reconcile the preference for the other two consoles.

Burnout 1 & 2 come to mind which is a huge series, but again, Xbox offered better graphics and bonus levels. Not a tough choice there.

The Need for Speed games were also on the Gamecube.

That's why you bought the arcade stick.

MK1 was the rage among teens and pre teens that liked the blood, Street Fighter II was the rage among real fighting game fans. MKI's fighting engine was terrible, even at the time.

Not really, it was the system for MKI, but MKII was more popular (at least in my area) and was much better on the SNES and Street Fighter II was the most played game and only on the SNES for a LONG time.


Oh it was, I was just pointing out that the SNES did have good sports games later on (probably part of the reason it pulled away from the Genesis) and that sports games weren't quite the system makers then that they are today as gaming wasn't quite as main stream then.

You didn't have that frat boy market that bought consoles just to play Madden back then. Or at least it wasn't as large.


But as you point out, of course the Cube lost because it was lacking it the genres that are popular here. That's certainly the main reason. I didn't care as I don't like those genre's, but it killed the Cube's chances of competing.

Genesis was THE system for sports. The difference in quality of Electronic Arts' games acted as a neon beacon leading to Sega's section in the stores. The sports genre might have been #2 in influence back then, but that was only because of the stratospheric appeal of fighting games, which leads to the following...

Capcom absolutely saved the SNES in North America with Street Fighter II. This is not hyperbole (although if you weren't around then or really weren't paying attention to sales figures, it may seem, in hindsight, something worthy of debate). Sega, stunningly, had all the momentum coming out of '91. The exclusive SFII turned the tide. That one game meant SNES dominated the fighting genre until Acclaim handed Sega the mantle with the arrival of Mortal Kombat. One year later, though Nintendo once again took control with a superior MKII. And, for the whole generation, SNES, with a standard 6-button controller from day 1, had an inherent advantage.

Thus, the two systems split the two most important genres of the day. And the market split to as close to 50/50 as could ever be expected.

Fast forward to the now-dying generation, it could easily be argued that Sony had firm control of each of the top genres. With pure 20/20 hindsight of each system's catalogue of games, the only category which shouldn't be the least bit controversial to say PS2 lost would be FPS to Xbox, and that was way too little, way too late to overcome Sony's first-mover advantage.

no DVD
no GTA
Mario Sunshine came out way late, and was not as good as Mario 64
Cell Animation Zelda
Weak 3rd Party lineup
Too many kiddie games

we all know why the cube lost. it's because of that handle on the console

From memory the genesis vs snes battle was fairly close, until maybe right at the end when sega moved to supporting the 32x (cough) and the sega cd. I doubt it would have been as close without the genesis advantage in the sports genre. As drexl says, it took a while for ea to get a handle on the snes.

One thing that stands out for me, xbox vs ps2, is the lack of american rpgs on the ps2. Not like the xbox is loaded, but at least kotor, jade empire, and morrowind gives you something to go with.