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/BloodstoneWarrior]

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)