worldrunover said:
And what was all that GBA-GC connectivity tripe they fed us?
This "tripe" was an attempt to distinguish the console from the others by leveraging Nintendo's strength in the handheld market, not an attempt to screw people by making them buy 4 GBAs to play multiplayer, as is often assumed. The idea was that players already had the GBAs, which was perfectly valid considering the substantial userbase.
If you've ever really played Four Swords Adventures or Pac-Man Vs., you'd realize the potential in the concept. The fact that Sony is planning to connect PSP and PS3 further validates Nintendo. The main mistake Nintendo made was trying to advertise it as a main feature of the console, but without providing any must-have killer apps to back it up.
Another major mistake was Nintendo's handling of the feature in relation to 3rd parties. Though they offered incentives for its use(reduced licensing fees, I believe), they seemed to set no real guidelines for the quality of the implementation. Therefore, most 3rd parties, EA and Ubisoft in particular, typically met the requirement in the simplest way possible, usually through dinky throwaway "unlockables" you'd get for connecting the GC version of a game to its GBA counterpart.
Overall, I think a D is fair. Though I'm a Nintendo fanboy myself, I would have given them an F.
Some major mistakes that they made(strictly in a commercial sense):
- No Mario game at launch, despite having 5 years to develop it.
- Questionable design. I like the way the gamecube looks myself, but artistic considerations don't apply wihen dealing with mass audiences. The same goes with Wind Waker.
- Continued struggles with "mature" audiences. RE and Eternal Darkness are fine, but if Nintendo ever wants to shed the kiddy image(and draw 3rd party m-rated software), they'll have to publish more than two M-rated titles per generation.
- The well-documented post-launch drought.
- Overdependence on franchise characters. Underdevelopment of new franchises, such as Battalion Wars and Geist.
- No sports sims. When Nintendo dumped Left Field, they effectively relinquished any pretense of recognizing the sports genre. Wave Race and 1080 were pawned off on the a derivative and undertalented studio(NST), the NBA Courtside franchise was axed, a prospective NFL Football game from Retro Studios was cancelled, and lord only knows what happened to Nintendo Pennant Chase Baseball. Just as with "mature" games, Nintendo counted on 3rd parties in this regard-- and found that, without stoking the fire with first-party releases, the audience won't be there to pick up the 3rd party games.
- Retro Studios. Nintendo expected a number of key launch/post-launch period titles from Retro, but mismanagement resulted in considerable downsizing and the inability to produce more than one major title at any one time. Furthermore, the talent that is there has been wasted updating a commercially moribund series, when it could have been providing original Western-style franchises to complement Nintendo's established studios.
Achievements
- Though 3rd party software lagged greatly behind the other two consoles, GC still had roughly twice as much 3rd party support as the N64.
- Re-establishing relations with Square. Taking the initiative to establish working relationships with other major 3rd parties, such as Namco, Capcom, Sega, and EA.
- Despite all of GC's struggles, and the fact that it was evident by 2003 that it would be the odd console out, Nintendo has stuck with it-- and with generous bundling practices, still managed to keep it alive, however tenuously, through the complete console cycle.
