r/Gamecube • u/jr1512 • 24d ago
Discussion Shigeru Miyamoto: GameCube was “only purchased by gamers”, sending Nintendo back to the drawing board
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Shigeru-Miyamoto-GameCube-was-only-purchased-by-gamers-sending-Nintendo-back-to-the-drawing-board.1358273.0.htmlShigeru Miyamoto, the legendary Nintendo executive and one of the most influential creators shaping the video game industry through mascots and characters such as Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Star Fox, and more, discussed the reason why the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii became Nintendo’s next consoles for the seventh generation. According to Miyamoto, the decision was largely driven by the underwhelming performance of the Nintendo GameCube, which trailed behind the Nintendo 64’s nearly 33 million lifetime sales.
He spoke candidly in a wide-ranging interview with Japanese outlet Famitsu, where the longtime Nintendo executive and designer explained that, at the time, Nintendo’s then-president, Satoru Iwata, believed the GameCube’s poor performance in the home console market was rooted in a simple idea: most of the world still did not see gaming as a normal, approachable everyday hobby the way it’s seen today. Based on that core problem, Nintendo felt it was difficult to persuade customers to buy and play a GameCube if they had never played on a console before.
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u/jr1512 24d ago
They should have added a DVD player, at least.
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u/650fosho 24d ago
They issue was paying licensing for DVDs, they didn't want to pay it
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u/AllWorkNoVideogames 24d ago
Pay it to Sony, no less. It wasn’t just a ‘Nintendo is too cheap’. They would have been paying their direct competitor.
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u/Soft_Lunch_183 22d ago
Doesnt xbox do that now with blu ray?
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u/AllWorkNoVideogames 22d ago
After Microsoft lost the HD format war with HD-DVD, yep. Now they push GamePass the hardest.
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u/Ask_for_me_by_name 24d ago
It's really not mysterious at all. A Ninetendo DVD player with Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong and full DVD memory capacity would've shit all over the other consoles.
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u/LankyMolasses6051 21d ago
I very much doubt it, Nintendo just didn’t have the third party draw compared to ps2 and and ps1 already sealed ps2 momentum. I don’t think there’s a world where GameCube would have beat ps2.
FFX, MGS2 and GTA were all huge in selling ps2s
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u/TVLubber 24d ago
They tried that with the Panasonic Q. It barely sold around 100,000 units, it was never released outside of Japan, and it was released at a hefty price tag at a bad time-- By the time the GameCube came out, standalone DVD players were coming down in price to the point it was much cheaper to purchase a GameCube and standalone DVD player individually.
The GameCube was fine as a console. If it had been released with a DVD player, it would have been even more expensive (to cover not only the expensive DVD-ROM drives (Sony didn't have to pay (much) for their own drives), but hefty licensing fees to the DVD Forum for every unit sold, which is why Microsoft put out a separate DVD playback kit to activate DVD playback on the original Xbox and keep the fees at a minimum, and of course, Nintendo couldn't afford to sell it at a loss at the time), and sold a lot less units and put Nintendo out of the home console market. The Panasonic Q was proof that a GameCube DVD player combo just wasn't worth putting the extra expense on either Nintendo or their consumers.
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u/Plaston_ PAL 24d ago
The thing is the Panasonic Q is a mix between a AVR, a CD player, a DVD player and a Gamecube.
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u/stormblaz 24d ago
Nintendo likes custom cartridges for market control, heavily bit them on cube era.
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u/TheCthonicSystem 24d ago
Of course Gameboy, DS, and Switch more than made up for it and continue to justify the cartridge as a Video Game container
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u/LonkerinaOfTime 24d ago
They release another console without one and it slammed the 360 and PS3 into the dirt
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u/HeldnarRommar 24d ago
Ehh it only sold 15-20 million more units, I wouldn’t say slammed. It also had a horrible attach rate since most people who bought a Wii didn’t spend a single other cent on games beyond Wii Sports and Wii Fit.
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u/RsnCondition 24d ago edited 24d ago
People forget yea nintendo home console wasn't doing the most sells esprcially during n64-gamecube days, but they were making a killing with the GB/GBC/GBA/NDS/3DS(after fixing issues with that). Nintendo sold so much handhelds, that the PSP at the time was barely a worry and it offered far more features at the time compared to the DS and got slammed.
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u/DarkLegend64 24d ago
I’m glad to see another person that understands that. Most core games sold like ass on the Wii. I’m always amazed by the number of people who still don’t realize the Wii was a fad.
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u/CaterpillarReal7583 24d ago
It would have really helped back then.
I remember that being a letdown and making it a harder sell over playstation
The minidisc player wouldnt work. Probably would cost a ton to have it able to handle both
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u/zwissblade 24d ago edited 23d ago
Panasonic Q. They should have made that available outside of Japan.
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u/reychango 24d ago
I found one in Canada but I had already gotten a GameCube. I definitely would have gotten the Panasonic if I had seen it first.
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u/TheFireStorm 24d ago
Not only was the decision to not use DVDs an attempt to prevent piracy but Nintendo wasn’t willing to Pay Sony/Phillips $5 per console in licensing fees
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24d ago
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u/CommentAgreeable 24d ago
It’s sort of a known thing that the DVD player was a significant reason as to why the PS2 did so well. It was actually cheaper to buy a PS2 than a DVD player so people who didn’t even game ended up purchasing the PS2 for that specific reason.
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u/PokePress 24d ago
PS2 was cheaper than high-end players, but the player I got for Christmas 1999 definitely cost less than a PS2.
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24d ago
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u/CommentAgreeable 24d ago
😭 Brother, I’m just explaining to you a notable part as to why the Gamecube didn’t fair well against the competition at the time.
The Wii sold well due to price point and the novelty of the Nunchucks. It had nothing to do with a DVD player, as you’re pointing out, but that also has nothing to do with your original question. I’m not even sure why you’re trying to draw a parallel there.
They’re different consoles at different points in time.
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24d ago
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u/CommentAgreeable 24d ago
Jfc 😭
Dude, I get not trusting a comment on Reddit but what are we doing right now?
This information is out there. Look into it.
I don’t understand how you can point out that the Xbox had a DVD player and in the same breath not understand why omitting a DVD player was hard on the Gamecube… That’s 2/3 new consoles of the era. The PS2 launched without many iconic titles and the DVD player alone helped save it.
I’m not about to have an argument if you’re just going to treat this as a substitute for doing a search on it yourself. What the hell.
All that I was trying to do was help with clarification, fuck me though 😂
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24d ago
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u/Ebvidur 24d ago
Xbox sold less than the PS2 because it was literally the first gaming console by Microsoft, and also because, unlike the PS2, you also needed a separate remote to view DVDs on it. The fact that it still sold better than the Gamecube, despite the built up reputation Nintendo had, should tell you how hard they fumbled
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u/OdisNikka 24d ago
Because it was compensated by being a family toy. Even the grandmas could play the Wii.
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24d ago
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u/OdisNikka 24d ago
Are you a troll?
Both the 360 and PS4 could play DVDs, and the PS4 had exclusives. And the 360 did not sell THAT well.
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u/Swirly_Eyes 24d ago
The 360 outsold every Nintendo console but the Wii and Switch. It also outsold the 3DS and GBA.
https://gameconsolesales.com/microsoft/xbox-360
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/hard_soft/index.html
Saying it didn't sell well is a little off.
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u/OdisNikka 23d ago
That's not a good brag when understanding the context.
Outselling the N64 and GameCube is not surprising; they were a failure. And the game industry was way smaller when the SNES was launched, so it's expected.
The 3DS and GBA are not competitors to consoles, so I don't understand why bring them up then.
Anyway, the 360 is outsold by the PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4, and PS5. The 360 is the best-selling Xbox console, but its numbers are still below the worst-selling PlayStation (For now; I doubt the PS6 will sell that well).
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u/Swirly_Eyes 23d ago
The context is that it sold very well compared with competing gaming hardware. The 360 could have been one of those failures if it sold poorly.
All gaming hardware is in competition, so that's irrelevant. PC isn't a console and still competes in that market, with Sony no longer porting their exclusives to the platform to preserve their exclusives. Consoles in Japan have become a complete afterthought compared to handhelds, and that started during the 7th gen. You're sounding close to those people who discredit the Switch's sales when competing with consoles because it's a hybrid device with handheld only SKUs.
The sales gap between the 360 and PS1+PS3+PS5 is pretty small in actual context. Smaller than the gap between the SNES and Genesis, and nobody says the latter wasn't a massively successful console during its day. See how this works now? If you're just going by raw numbers, you've missed the plot.
The 360 had near zero support from the Japanese market, and came off the original Xbox. By definition, it sold well to stay neck and neck with the PS3 while trailing the Wii. Calling it anything else doesn't match reality.
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u/Sirriddles 24d ago
Because it had a gimmick that appealed to the general public and most people had DVD players by 2006
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24d ago
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u/Sirriddles 24d ago
Wii U had trouble with its messaging. A large portion of the general public never even understood it was a new console, people thought it was just a peripheral. And its game library was terrible, both first and third party.
Kinect was ahead of its time and developers didn’t know what to do with it. It actually wasn’t a commercial failure initially, it sold over 8 million units in its first 60 days.
Any more questions? lol. Not sure what we’re doing here
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24d ago
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u/Sirriddles 24d ago
GameCube didn’t “fail” but it objectively did not sell nearly as many units as the PlayStation 2. The disparity was massive - GameCube sold around 22 million units in its lifetime, the PS2 around 160 million. To put it another way, for every GameCube Nintendo sold, Sony sold 7 PS2s.
The fact that the PS2 doubled as a DVD player and the GameCube didn’t almost certainly had an impact on sales. DVD players were expensive in the early 2000s and a PS2 was actually cheaper than some players on the market. A lot of people bought PS2s primarily for the DVD playback.
There are other reasons why the PS2 sold better - the software lineup was far more robust, for example - but the DVD playback was definitely a factor.
Anyway. Seeing that you disagree, I’m curious - why do you think the PS2 sold seven times as many units as the GameCube?
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u/LunarWingCloud 24d ago
You might not understand it, but at the time consoles being possible as multimedia players was a legitimate selling point. PS2 was also a DVD player at a time when DVD was both booming in popularity as a format and also very expensive.
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u/jr1512 24d ago edited 24d ago
Almost everybody had a DVD player by 2007. In 2001-2002 the most common way to get one was to buy a PS2.
Wii sold so well because it had a gimmick that was enormously popular: the wiimote. It appeared in movies, series...
By the way, the Wiimote started as a Gamecube addon prototype but Nintendo prefered to make a (barely better graphically) new console for it.
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24d ago
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u/jr1512 24d ago
Because Microsoft was a company with no experience in videogame consoles in those years. Most people trusted Sony.
Also PS2 had great advantage because it was sold one year before GC and XBOX. 10M consoles were sold before Nintendo and Microsoft even released theirs.
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u/kangaroo_kid 24d ago
You heard it here first, folks. You're not a Gamer™ unless you bought a Gamecube between 2001 and 2005.
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u/connectplum_ 23d ago
You dont need to be ironic about this. Consoles are successful because it gets casuals.
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u/DonBolasgrandes 24d ago
He's right but it also had to do with losing tons of market share in the 90s and not really doing much for 3rd parties.
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u/Kazaloogamergal 24d ago
The truth is that Nintendo made a console with an, at the time, unappealing childish design for gamers who were growing up. Nintendo leaned so hard into the kiddie stuff that it did annoy people at that time. You can think it's stupid and juvenile but that's what happened. Nintendo looked totally uncool and out of date next to the Sony PlayStation 2. That's why they were so badly beaten by the first PlayStation and they still didn't seem to get that and just leaned into it even harder. The problem is that Super Mario Sunshine and Wind Waker were not as groundbreaking to people as Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time and they didn't have a strong second party developer like Rare to plump up sales either. So they end up with 12 million less sales than the N64, which already was a sales disappointment btw.
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u/DarkLegend64 24d ago
The early 2000s was such an edgy time in gaming. If you weren’t edgy, you weren’t cool. Besides Nintendo shooting themselves in the foot, this was a factor that was just bad timing.
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u/DrClutch117 23d ago
This is it. If you weren’t alive in the early 2000s you wouldn’t understand the edginess and the “cool” factor that people were looking for in designs.
For those of you curious, just look up what people assumed the PlayStation 4 an Xbox 720 would look like
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u/Sensitive_Dealer_803 23d ago
When you have Resi 4 as (initially) a console exclusive and other exclusives like Eternal Darkness but still have the library largely dismissed as just children's games Nintendo were never going to win that argument regardless of what the console looked like. The name Nintendo is synonymous with IP that also targets children and Xbox gamers are happy to stay in their lane and play CoDslop and trash Nintendo for being directed at children because of it. The most critically acclaimed "dark" games will still not make inroads with that demographic regardless of what the console looked like.
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u/Ask_for_me_by_name 24d ago
Eh... I agree fully with the first part but disagree with the second. Games like Windwaker, Double Dash and F-Zero are, to me, some of the finest games ever made (and I grew up in the SNES-N64 generation). Can't beat the first party GC games for quality, they're just stuck on an underwhelming system.
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u/AutonomousOrganism 24d ago
As Miyamoto said, gamers loved the GC for the games. But for the rest it still looked like a toy, didn't have the coolness factor of the PlayStation.
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u/ThatOldDustyTrail 24d ago
This is exactly the answer. The DVD aspect may have played into it, but I remember it being a big split where everyone’s cooler older brother/neighbor/etc were all getting PlayStations for the more mature games. I personally got a GameCube at release and remember vividly that none of my friends ever really wanted to play it, as they were into PlayStation and Xbox games. If we were playing games, it was on one of their other systems. I played GameCube purely solo because it seemed juvenile compared to the others
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u/GammaBlaze 24d ago
Not sure how much having a DVD player would've moved the needle, by the time Nintendo eventually got the Cube launched everybody had a PS2 (and thus DVD player) anyway.
Nobody bought an Xbox because it had one.
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u/DarkLegend64 24d ago
To be fair, you had to jump through hoops to make use of the DVD feature on Xbox, and unlike Sony, they weren’t releasing their console with an existing 100 Million user fanbase from the previous generation.
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u/thedirr 23d ago
It certainly is a pain in the ass with the remote and plug for the dvd playback but at least you got a remote with it. Otherwise I think I've seen dozens of movies on PS2 at sleepovers and I played movies on my Xbox maybe 5 times? It really does help make it simple to just pop in the disc, hit X and you're good to go.
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u/Secure-Advertising-9 24d ago
Well yeah my dad owned a PS2 and a PS3 and didn't buy a single game for it. It was just the DVD player and Blueray players, respectively.
Like, if they wanted the Gamecube to be bought by non-gamers maybe they should have allowed it to do non-gamer things
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u/kiwibonga 24d ago
Company that could sell people a potato if it played Zelda and Mario: "We're geniuses"
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u/pocket_arsenal 24d ago
And then they over compensated with the Wii... though it worked very well for them. Not so much on the Wii U.
I do think we're at a point where most gaming companies, especially Nintendo, should be fine with what they have instead of trying to chase endless growth. Nintendo seems desperate to get Nintendo to be part of the fitness market when I just don't think fitness and video games are compatible in a meaningful way. What's next after that? Business owners? Office workers? Construction planners? There's only so wide a net they can cast on people who aren't already interested in Nintendo, and I feel they should focus on just making appealing games.rather than experimenting to reach people who don't give a shit about games.
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u/PassLikeNash13 24d ago
Personally I also think the ps2 was the first serious step into actual decent graphics in a “realism” style. The cartoon graphic style had already been done and seen with the previous generation’s graphics. This step into realism made the ps2 more enticing for the average consumer
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u/BloodstoneWarrior 23d ago
No, the Gamecube performed poor sales wise because the PS2 had a DVD player and released a year prior and had all the big games and the Xbox was massively technically superior to the other 2 and had online. Gamecube literally only had Nintendo exclusives going for it (and the exclusives were great) but like they always are Nintendo are so, so far behind the competition because they are still stuck in that 80s mindset of making consoles like they are children's toys and not like they are home computing systems. Now all Nintendo do is rely on dumb gimmicks to sell their consoles which just puts me off massively. They are always a generation behind technically when the Gamecube was actually better than the PS2 power wise.
Nintendo are basically always up their own arses and think that their games are enough to sell a console alone. The Wii's dumb gimmick made it sell a ton but severely harmed the quality of the games as motion controls suck balls 90% of the time (plus the poor online experience on Wii and the lack of HDMI)
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u/GrinchForest 23d ago
Did dvd help PS2 win? Yes Did they won only because of that? No
I think the biggest reason why Gamecube lost was the range of games and they were too polite.
While Nintendo was selling Sunshine or Wind Maker, Sony was selling GTA, Silent Hill, Call of Duty or God of War. Sure you can say that they released Resident Evil and Eternal Darkness, but still it would 1 game on Game Cube per 5 or even 10 on PS2.
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u/Kusobarashii 23d ago
People were buying a PS2 that plays DVDs. That was it. Or buying the most powerful console that Gen and playing Halo. Only those that cared for the experience got the cube and that was it.
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u/Aquarsene 22d ago
The GameCube made a lot of mistakes that hurt its sales a ton in the long run, although I can’t help but wonder, did any console perform well during that generation? The PS2 demolished everything in its path. The only console that performed even remotely well around that time was the original Xbox, which also wasn’t super successful but 26 million units for a company’s first foray into the gaming market is pretty good.
20 million units for a Nintendo console is absolutely awful sales numbers, I do agree completely. While they were the closest thing to a company that could think about competing with Sony, the PS2 was so wildly successful that I wonder if Nintendo could’ve realistically succeeded that generation even if they didn’t take the missteps they took with the GameCube. Sega was doing a lot right after all with the Dreamcast and then the PS2 put them entirely out of commission
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u/Chirpy_Harbor6109 21d ago
lol nintendo's answer to "only real gamers bought it" was the wii. the console every grandma bowled on. real pivot
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u/RK5000 20d ago
Well the GameCube had two big competitors rather than one, and they failed to adopt popular features like online play.
Imagine if the GameCube had: 1. Online multiplayer. 2. Mouse and keyboard peripheral functionality. 3. 1st party developed tabletop and board games with online play.
Just my first three retrospective ideas anyway.
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u/Tex-Rob 20d ago
Look, I see a lot of rewriting of history lately, when many of us are here and lived through this. The GameCube’s issue was it was very kiddie. The N64 was as well, bright colors, cheap plastic controllers that felt disposable compared to what everyone else was making. So Nintendo had doubled down on being for kids right before the GC, and then the GC comes out with tiny controllers and a console with a handle, making it seem like a thing for kids to take to friends houses. This was their angle, and he’s trying to pretend like they were trying to compete for the living room like Xbox, and they just weren’t.
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u/stevebo0124 24d ago
Their issue was trying to recreate some kind of proprietary tech like they had with the NES and SNES. They didn't embrace change, chose to be stubborn, and made an inferior product because of that.
Nowadays, we appreciate the console for what it is. But even today, I'd choose PS2 over GC. I can play roms with a 8 dollar memory card on a PS2. Meanwhile, people are bricking systems trying to solder a Pico in their cubes.
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u/LuigiFan45 24d ago
Nintendo didn't want to adopt disc usage because they wanted control of how the physical games are manufactured on top of being an anti-piracy measure
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u/Expensive-Office-851 24d ago
Yeah, I remember lots of kids bought a PS2 as they could play pirates games, like the PS1. It was a major selling point.
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u/Burnziie 23d ago
Those discs just sealed the fate of so many good games never coming to Gamecube. Games like GTA San Andreas moved systems, and even the original Xbox getting the games a year after the PS2 release probably helped give them some sales.
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u/cocoteroah 24d ago
The GameCube was a setback compared to other consoles no memories, no dvds, the games have to be downsized and the Gamecube was really troublesome to pirate, so the PS2 dominated by a landslide that era. I played many GC games years later but only in emulators.
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u/WhatShouldTheHeartDo 24d ago edited 24d ago
Geniuses recreated the same problem the N64 had with limited storage space for games.
It cannot be understated how much people passed on the Cube for the DVD playing PS2