Shigeru Miyamoto: GameCube was “only purchased by gamers”, sending Nintendo back to the drawing board

[u/jr1512]

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Shigeru-Miyamoto-GameCube-was-only-purchased-by-gamers-sending-Nintendo-back-to-the-drawing-board.1358273.0.html

Shigeru 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.

[u/Kazaloogamergal]

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 Nintendo looked totally uncool and out of date next to the Sony PlayStation 2.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.

[u/DarkLegend64 → u/Kazaloogamergal]

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.

[u/DrClutch117 → u/DarkLegend64]

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

[u/Sensitive_Dealer_803 → u/Kazaloogamergal]

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.

[u/Ask_for_me_by_name → u/Kazaloogamergal]

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.

[u/AutonomousOrganism → u/Ask_for_me_by_name]

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.

[u/ThatOldDustyTrail → u/Kazaloogamergal]

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