
A Dolphin's Tale: The Story of GameCube - MBCook
http://www.dromble.com/2014/01/07/dolphin-tale-story-of-gamecube/
======
MBCook
I really loved my GameCube, in many ways it was the best console of it's
generation. But it just couldn't compete with the library of games the PS2
had.

It was kind of sad to read this. There are some thing in the article, like the
idea of a console as a toy for fun, that are so quintessentially Nintendo and
why I love them. But it's also so clear that it's not the direction the market
went. You can see how the 3rd party problems got worse and the beginnings of
the disaster that Nintendo's on-line efforts. There are points where it's just
so clear their arrogance is causing them serious problems.

I really love Nintendo. I hope they can turn themselves around before it's too
late.

~~~
cookiecaper
I mean, Nintendo is not perfect by any stretch, but afaik it's not like
they're on the ropes. The DS line is still immensely profitable, and they've
had mixed success with consoles. There's no need to act like they're on the
brink.

~~~
tostitos1979
From what I've read online about Wii U sales, they may have a big problem. I
haven't read anything about the holiday season so they might have turned it
around. But I doubt it. There was no significant discounting or console
bundles. I thought they'd release a Super Mario 3D world bundle to move sales
.. surprising that they didn't do this in the US.

~~~
talmand
From what I've read they had fairly strong sales leading up to Christmas for
the WiiU. It sold well in Japan for instance, but with little competition
because the PS4 was late being released there and no XboxOne. They had enough
sales to crash the online system with the number of new people trying to
register accounts. But nowhere near the numbers they were projecting, of which
may take quite a while before they hit their target, if ever. It cannot really
compete with PS4 and XboxOne numbers.

But that matters little because they dominate with the 3DS. In terms of
handhelds they have little competition. Nintendo can survive the WiiU if
they're smart about it, so I doubt they'll be out of the game anytime soon.

They just need to stop doing the stupid gimmicks they pass off as innovation
and focus on their strengths, making fun games that everyone can enjoy.

------
hayksaakian
Great quote that (IMO) demonstrates Nintendo's philosophy towards new
technology:

\----- [2003]

Each time Satoru Iwata did an interview with the press, the subject of online
gaming would rear its head. As you can imagine, Iwata became increasingly
annoyed with answering the same question over and over. He slammed critics who
claimed that Nintendo couldn’t survive as a business unless they embraced
online gaming as the future.

“All the talk in the industry regarding online gaming has been misleading.
Network swindlers have made it seem like companies can’t survive in this
business without network compatibility,” said Iwata. “That’s the same type of
rhetoric people have been saying about the newspaper business, that the paper-
based periodical business will be dead in three years. In reality, the number
of users willing to pay a monthly fee for online games is small. Many of the
American companies who were focusing almost exclusively on network games last
year now view network capabilities as an advertising tool. The fact of the
matter is, network games can’t provide a stable source of profit for a company
of Nintendo’s scale.”

~~~
wvenable
Nintendo is used to selling games for $40-$60 a pop. They don't want to be
lead into the situation like on the iPhone where the average game is 99 cents.

Their strategy so far is to pretend that it's still 2001 and that isn't a
strategy that they can sustain forever.

~~~
ANTSANTS
I dunno, it seems to be working pretty well for them on the 3DS (the WiiU, not
so much...):

[http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/sales/hard_soft/index.html](http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/sales/hard_soft/index.html)

[http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/sales/software/3ds.html](http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/sales/software/3ds.html)

What's wrong with making good games and charging more than a fast food lunch
for them? It's not like anybody levels this complaint at Microsoft or Sony,
who tend to charge even more for new releases.

------
guiomie
This article was totally worth it just for the youtube link at 02:00 .

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKlbx5niBu8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKlbx5niBu8)

------
girvo
I still use my GameCube every week (playing through the Resident Evil series
at the moment). I've built homebrew, run on my XenoGC chip I soldered on
myself. I'm building up the courage (and time) to buy a new one and attempt
the IDE adapter. It's my absolute favourite console ever. :)

~~~
ZeroGravitas
The bonus mini-game for Resident Evil that is unlocked when you complete the
game was astounding. You had to get combos to score so it involved getting
yourself into the worst possible situation, totally surrounded by zombies
before starting your counter-attack. Incredibly suited gameplay to the zombie
genre. (I think they released it standalone for the 3DS too).

My Gamecube is packed away, but I still pull out the Bongo accesories to play
Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat via Wii backwards-compatibility. This is possibly my
favourite game of all time, there's just something magical about getting into
the flow state playing a game that you control via bongos and hand-claps.

Here's a video review that agrees with my view that this is a hidden gem that
introduced a lot of concepts use later by Nintendo:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGi4yd545Ac](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGi4yd545Ac)

~~~
tfinch
Just commenting to say thanks for mentioning the bongos! My house-mates
thought I was mad when I bought them as a student, but it quickly turned into
a house favourite. I would still recommend them to this day if you can get
your hands on them.

Re: flow-state - perhaps the only game where this is possible at any level of
intoxication.

~~~
girvo
I disagree.. Even when drunk, I can achieve flow state on expert for Mario's
DDR...

------
72deluxe
Fascinating read. I still have two Gamecubes, one with a battery pack and
portable screen that is barely viewable from a short distance, but the thought
is there! I think Wind Waker is the only game that my wife could cope with me
playing. She watched me play it from beginning to end. I love Link's little
boat on the water....

I also have my Dreamcast and PSX with screen to keep me entertained. Not sure
I'll ever move on to newer hardware, other than the PC games I have! Still
reliably playing Homeworld 2 every Monday, pretty sad really.

Great console. Great read.

------
1stop
I like the WiiU concept:

\- Off TV play

\- DS on steriods kind of works

\- In a family house hold, having the game on both screens completely gets rid
of "You're in the way" frustrations.

\- Wireless display streaming!? (When this gets better, it will be amazing).

~~~
peroo
I agree Off-TV play is a really nice feature, but in my opinion the cons
outweigh the pros.

\- Few games use it in any meaningful way. \- It's bulky and unfamiliar. \- It
muddies the image of what the console is (is the tablet the Wii U?) \- It
raised the price of the console significantly. \- It threw away the momentum
they had for something none of their install-base wanted.

While I love my Wii U, it's destined to become another 20m failure. I hope
that I'm wrong and that with time they can really iterate on their online
functionality and get some better 3rd party support, but I'm not optimistic.
If nothing else the 3DS is killing it, so it's not like they're going broke
any time soon.

------
Raphmedia
Say whatever you want about the GameCube, but it's a great console.

People over here are starting to play it once again. Lot of people would
gather for a beer and a game of Super Smash Melee, even our non game friends.

The controller is great, the games are great, and since the games weren't
aiming for looks but gameplay, they all age very well!

------
ChrisNorstrom
It was iconic in it's design no doubt but publishing for GameCube was a
disaster for Capcom's Resident Evil franchise.

They released Resident Evil 4 on the GameCube and sold a total of 1.5 million
copies. When they ported the game to the PS2 it sold a total of 8 million
copies.

~~~
georgemcbay
Financially not so great for Capcom, but the GameCube version was far superior
to the PS2 port, so as a gamer who considers Resident Evil 4 to be one of the
finest single player action games of all time, I'm glad they went out on the
GC first and ported later rather than having the PS2 version be a "least
common denominator" regulator during initial development because most games
that went that route just used shitty low-res PS2-friendly textures across the
board.

~~~
ChrisNorstrom
Oh of course it was. But the director flipped at the thought of it being
ported to the PS2 because of this.

------
Kronopath
”People do not play with the game machine itself. They play with the software,
and they are forced to purchase a game machine in order to use the software.
Therefore the price of the machine should be as cheap as possible.” - Yamauchi

If there's one thing Nintendo seems to be forgetting lately, it's this. They
seem to think, nowadays, that bolting on new hardware features will improve
demand, but it's never true. Software drives hardware sales. Mario sold the
NES and SNES. Wii Sports sold the Wii. Pokemon is selling the 3DS these days
-- until Pokemon (and to a lesser extent Animal Crossing) came out, the 3DS
was doing terribly. And nothing is selling the Wii U. A tablet controller
alone can't save it.

~~~
derefr
> They seem to think, nowadays, that bolting on new hardware features will
> improve demand

I don't think Nintendo has ever "bolted on new hardware features" for the sake
of selling consoles to _consumers._ The new hardware features are pretty much
always for the sake of _luring third parties into developing something
innovative for the platform._

See this excellent essay: [http://www.lostgarden.com/2005/09/nintendos-genre-
innovation...](http://www.lostgarden.com/2005/09/nintendos-genre-innovation-
strategy.html)

Nintendo makes money on games that explore new genres. It can't keep doing
that unless it keeps increasing the design-space and interaction-space to find
those new genres within.

~~~
Kronopath
Nintendo makes money on games that people want to play. To suggest anything
else is nonsense, or at least overcomplicating the situation. Innovation _can_
help with that, but isn't _guaranteed_ to. Consider that some of the best-
selling games on the Wii and DS were the New Super Mario Bros. games -- these
were games that were so popular they _moved hardware_ , and yet their core
genres and mechanics are identical to the Mario games of the NES and SNES era.
In fact, it could be argued that their success was exactly _because_ they
stuck so closely to that old formula -- other Mario games, such as the 3D
platformers, don't sell nearly as well.

Innovation is good when it supports the goal of creating games people want to
play. Wii Sports, for example, could not be done without the Wii Remote. That
was a good innovation that served both to lower the barrier of entry to games
and to allow for new modes of play that people found fun. But things like the
3D of the 3DS, which Nintendo is now wisely backing away from, or the tablet
on the Wii U, which substantially increased its price tag, don't provide those
same benefits. And hardware innovation alone doesn't cut it -- it needs games
like Wii Sports to support it.

And I think that for a company like Nintendo, third-party support is heavily
overrated. The best way to get third-party support is to sell enough consoles
that they can no longer ignore you, and the only way to do that is strong
first-party games.

~~~
derefr
Did you read the article I linked? The reason Nintendo makes their money from
genre innovation, is that Microsoft and Sony have the resources to invest to
make money from polished "genre king" titles--and so Nintendo, necessarily,
must take the segment of the market they ignore. They do this by figuring out
ways to make games _cheaply_ that nevertheless have the potential for a strong
reaction from the market--and this basically necessitates genre innovation.
(Or remakes/ports, which Nintendo is also quite familiar with.)

~~~
Kronopath
I did read the article, but these points don't hit the core of why Nintendo is
successful, when it's successful. It's true that Nintendo tries to make games
cheaper than many AAA game companies, though with the ballooning cost of AAA
game development that's not saying much. It's true that it's often in new
genres. And it's _very_ true that they focused on a different, broader market
than Microsoft and Sony back in the Wii's heyday. What I'm saying is that
innovation alone is not enough to create success. It must be pointed in the
right direction. At times they've gotten this right, at other times they
haven't.

It's nonsense to imply that Nintendo games aren't polished, or that third-
party AAA game developers will necessarily dominate any genre that they choose
to develop for. I can't think of a 2D platformer that has ever done as well as
Mario, and 2D platformers are one of gaming's oldest genres -- certainly a
"mature genre".

That article was written back in 2005, just after the Wii Remote was
announced, when people were still speculating about that strange new
controller and what it could mean. We have the benefit of hindsight now, and
the best way to understand what was going on then is to take it straight from
the horse's mouth, looking back at the early days of the Wii, when Nintendo
talked openly about their business strategy. Back then, they outright said
that they based their new strategy on the books _The Innovator 's Dilemma_ and
_The Blue Ocean Strategy_. (They talked about this in their shareholder
meetings, which were available online but which I unfortunately can no longer
find.) These books give us a framework for understanding what they were doing
then -- no need to create ungainly terms like "genre king". The books talk
about conceiving of the market as the "core" \-- which were the people who
were actively playing and buying games at the time, and which were the target
market of their competitors -- and the "expanded audience" \-- which were
those who weren't playing games, or who used to play but had since stopped.
The latter is who Nintendo chose to focus on back then. Innovation did play a
part in that, but it doesn't explain it entirely: some games were innovative
and succeeded, (ex. Wii Sports), some were innovative and failed, (ex. Wii
Music, remember that one?) and some were _not_ innovative but still managed to
differentiate themselves by appealing to the expanded audience (ex. New Super
Mario Bros.). To lump the latter category of games, which were new entries in
genres with long and storied histories, together with games that were in
completely new genres, is contradictory.

New Super Mario Bros., for one, effectively used none of the hardware features
of the Wii to its advantage, and was still one of the strongest-selling games
of the generation. Its success is attributable not to innovation but to being
a game that many people, especially the expanded audience, wanted to play.
It's as simple as that.

------
brianpgordon
I'm amazed by how long and exhaustively-researched this article is. And it's
all on one big page with only a few ads at the top. How can this possibly be
profitable for the author?

------
Roritharr
I still vividly remember spending nights online trying to find out more about
the Dolphin... This is such a fascinating read, it strangely feels like
hearing other points of view of a story I was part of, even if just very
remotely.

This made me seriously consider buying a WiiU again, if only to experience how
that story develops...

------
agumonkey
Funny how N64 to GameCube's focus on developer friendliness is similar to
PS2/3 to PS4. Once number 1 then trimming the fat.
[http://imgur.com/okP8cdO](http://imgur.com/okP8cdO)

------
dec0dedab0de
To me the worst part of this whole ordeal is making the games shorter. I just
beat Link between worlds on 3DS, and I really wish it would have kept going.
Same thing for Pikmin3 on WiiU.

~~~
mandlar
A Link Between Worlds took me about ~16 hours. I only died 3 times (twice to
the 50 floor challenge in the Treacherous Tower because I didn't have enough
bottles at the time). I can still replay it in hero mode, but the game just
felt very, very short. Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed the game. I
just wish the main content was longer.

------
programminggeek
Nintendo might not make great developer platforms, but they make great games
and there will always be a place for a company that makes great games.

