/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.10474090]

Why was the GameCube so unsuccessful?

[Anonymous No.10474093]

>6th gen being allowed on /vr/ won't being down the quality guys! My childhood deserves to be touted as retro, too!
You all believed that

[Anonymous No.10474096]

>>10474093
Just wait till 7th gen comes

[Anonymous No.10474103]

>>10474090
baby console with childish games

[Anonymous No.10474108]

>>10474090
Real answer: PlayStation worldwide dominance. The N64 underperformed in every major territory except North America and the GameCube did nothing to turn that trend around. The console market can’t seem to support three home consoles with similar specs which forced Nintendo to pivot off and do their own thing while Microsoft and Sony are the 'main' console brands.

[Anonymous No.10474110]

underpowered and out "cooled" at the time

simple as

[Anonymous No.10474116]

>>10474110
The GameCube’s technical specs and graphical capabilities were quite solid. It was the mini DVD format that became the biggest hindrance for multiplat developers.

[Anonymous No.10474127]

>>10474093
It might just be my imagination, but I feel like the board really did chance. Don't get me wrong, the console war and low quality bait threads have always been here, but it feels mostly like the usual suspects all left. Like, I can't actually tell if the users from way back really did left or they've simply been overshadowed by the influx of "new" users.

[Anonymous No.10474129]

>>10474127
4chan in general has become overrun with low quality ESL phone-posters.

[Anonymous No.10474134]

>>10474127
Not your imagination. /vr/ changed a lot for the worst. Allowing 6th gen allowed more /v/ console warriors here. 4th and 6th gen also had console wars before but now younger and more numerous people entered the board.

[Anonymous No.10474150]

>>10474110
>underpowered
The GameCube was more powerful than the PS2.

[Anonymous No.10474163]

>>10474150
Yeah, like I said here >>10474116 the Cube’s specs were fine. It was more that developers were forced to cut stuff like soundtracks down compared to the PS2/Xbox versions due to lack of disc space.

[Anonymous No.10474164]

>>10474116
>>10474150
then lazy 3rd party devs didnt do enough with the hardware

bing bing yahoo

[Anonymous No.10474172]

PlayStation 2 on March 4, 2000, the GameCube on September 14, 2001

>its just as powerful as the ps2!

stop it

[Anonymous No.10474173]

>>10474164
It’s wahoo, not yahoo.

[Anonymous No.10474175]

>>10474173
its whatever i want it to be

[Anonymous No.10474181]

>>10474172
I’d say the very best looking games on PS2 stack up pretty favorably against the best of GameCube. Of course it’s well known that most PS2 games ran at pretty low res and looked more jaggy than GC/Xbox.

[Anonymous No.10474183]

>>10474172
>the GameCube on September 14, 2001
3 days after 9/11.
People in New York City would have been queueing up to buy a GameCube whilst the rubble and dust from the Twin Towers was still scattered throughout the streets.
Weird innit?

[Anonymous No.10474185]

>>10474175
No, you said something stupid and I called you out on it.

[Anonymous No.10474213]

>>10474185
no one liked the machine except for the kiddies and mario kart fans


yahoo

[Anonymous No.10474216]

>>10474213
I didn’t fuck up or misspeak. You did and now you can eat shit.

[Anonymous No.10474221]

No GTA

[Anonymous No.10474224]

>>10474216
you

[Anonymous No.10474235]

>>10474221
>There were no GTA games for the GameCube; GameCube ports for Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City were planned, but were cancelled for unknown reasons. It is possible this was because of the games' violence, or maybe due to disc space, though this is moot as similarly-violent games have been released for the platform as well as on subsequent Nintendo consoles, and disc space is less of an issue - the PC version of GTA III takes up less than a gigabyte of space. Another possible reason was that the GameCube was doing poorly compared to its competitors, and that a previous Rockstar-published title Smuggler's Run 2 sold poorly on the GameCube.

https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/GameCube

>The Grand Theft Auto franchise may soon be breaking records on the Nintendo GameCube as well according to Investors Business Daily. Upon completion of its exclusivity contract with SCEA at the end of 2004, Rockstar Games will release Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on Nintendo GameCube and Microsoft Xbox. "And they will sell, like, a jillion copies," according to Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities.

>April 28, 2003

https://www.gamecubicle.com/news-nintendo_gamecube_grand_theft_auto.htm

What could have been...

[Anonymous No.10474241]

>>10474235
I think it comes down to Rockstar (probably correctly) coming to the conclusion that GameCube sales wouldn’t have been worth the porting effort. Similarly, EA stopped putting their annual sports titles on GameCube due to low sales compared to the PS2/Xbox versions.

[Anonymous No.10474254]

>>10474241
>I think it comes down to Rockstar (probably correctly) coming to the conclusion that GameCube sales wouldn’t have been worth the porting effort.
GTA was the biggest series of the 6th gen, however. It being on the GameCube would have increased the console's sales.

A large part of why the GCN was known as a "kiddy console" back then was because it did not have GTA.

[Anonymous No.10474262]

>>10474254
Didn’t the radio stations in the game take advantage of 'live streaming' directly from the DVD or rather than being loaded into the system RAM or something like that? The number of radio stations and songs on the GameCube probably would have been reduced. It might have helped, but I doubt it would’ve sold as well as the Xbox ports.

[Anonymous No.10474269]

A lot of big names (Mario, Zelda, Mario Kart, Star Fox) had rushed and consequently dissapointing entries.

[Anonymous No.10474272]

>>10474090
Cartoony, family-friendly games were the exact opposite of what most gamers wanted at the time, particularly in post-9/11 America.

[Anonymous No.10474275]

cause all the good games were on ps2

[Anonymous No.10474281]

>>10474269
This was a big part of it. I adore Wind Waker and consider it a masterpiece, but the general perception was that Mario and Zelda on the Cube were inferior to their N64 predecessors. I also love Double Dash!! and wish co-op gameplay had become a staple of Mario Kart.

[Anonymous No.10474308]

>>10474108
Sony also used the PS1's momentum to push the PS2 earlier than the Gamecube by a whole year, and while the first year of PS2 fucking sucked it put out pic related just as an extra fuck you to the Gamecube and Xbox's launch period and also put the Dreamcast into the grave. No matter what you think about Sony or the Playstation 2, this was a completely unbeatable lineup of games to compete with, even if realistically you'd only get to play maybe 2 of these when they were brand new.

[Anonymous No.10474310]

>>10474183
Sounds soulful

[Anonymous No.10474316]

>>10474272
Yeah, late 90s edge carried over into the early 00s big time. Just look at sequels like Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (featuring music by Godsmack!) or Jak II.

[Anonymous No.10474318]

>>10474090
Let's take a look at the competition:
>PS2
The top dog. A game being PS2 exclusive is so common it's barely worth even mentioning.
This is the platform most games are meant to be played on.
>PS1
Still in the race, outselling all of its competition except for its own big brother.
Plenty of games available everywhere, and for reasonable prices as well.
>Xbox
The new guy. Has a decent library of both multiplatform and exclusive titles. Still pales in comparison to what the PS2 has to offer.
Mostly competent ports, you'd have to usually do direct comparisons to notice missing features like lighting effects in games ported from the PS2. At times games are even improved in comparison with better framerates and resolution.
Initial controller was mostly unsuitable for human hands but this was quickly fixed with third party controllers as well as Microsofts own S controller.
Quickly developed an amazing homebrew community and became the de facto digital home media player.
>Gamecube
The old washed up champion from several generations ago.
Severely lacking in multiplatform games compared to Xbox. More than half of its exclusive line-up was first party games by Nintendo and a lot of them paled in comparison to their N64 counterparts.
Controller with a weird layout and fewer buttons that the various developers had to work around rather than with. A lack of third party accessories like no light guns at all and barely any arcade sticks.

[Anonymous No.10474324]

>>10474150
>>10474163
There's a quote from one of the Burnout developers that always gets thrown around talking about how the Gamecube was woefully underpowered, but then you look at the games that are synonymous with the console and they all look and run very well.
I think instead of disc space constraints, what really held back a lot of Gamecube games was whether or not the developers were trying to brute force performance out of it. That was common for the majority of PS2/Xbox multiplats, and it might be why a lot of those skipped the Gamecube outright.

[Anonymous No.10474336]

>>10474324
That quote wasn't actually by a game developer.

[Anonymous No.10474358]

No Killer Apps. The Mario and Zelda games were good, but not great enough to attract outsiders. Unless you were already a nintendo fan there was no point to pick the gc as your first console.

[Anonymous No.10474365]

>>10474336
Fucking Germans.

[Anonymous No.10474382]

>>10474336
Is it not possible that he lived in England during Burnout 3's development?

[Anonymous No.10474385]

>>10474324
>brute force performance
Tech illiterate people always talk about "brute forcing" as though you gotta do foreplay on the Gamecube first. Seen fanboys say the same thing to cope with the PS3 and Xbone's weak GPU's too

[Anonymous No.10474387]

>>10474336
Assuming this is true, can anyone explain why the GameCube’s processor/GPU wasn’t "up to the job" compared to PS2/Xbox? The Cube’s specs seem perfectly capable. It got ports of the first two Burnout titles after all.

[Anonymous No.10474392]

>>10474382
While also referring to himself in third person and writing a fanfiction tier backstory for his new identity?

[Anonymous No.10474394]

>>10474385
The big difference back then is that the sixth gen consoles all had wildly different architectures which must’ve been a major headache when developing multiplat releases. Nowadays Xbox and PlayStation consoles are built with basically the same parts.

[Anonymous No.10474428]

>>10474394
Define "brute forcing"

[Anonymous No.10474453]

>>10474428
That term usually comes up when referring to a port being made for newer, more powerful hardware at the cost of some effects or lower res textures and such that were featured in the original release.

[Anonymous No.10474501]

>>10474428
>>10474453
A good example would be the infamous Silent Hill HD collection on PS3 and 360 where they had to brute force the games onto the newer hardware because the original source code was lost.

[Anonymous No.10474535]

>>10474134
>>10474127
It's not only that. The reality is that gaming massively expanded and most older posters were genuine hardcore enthusiasts who had real interest in the medium. Every forum is identical now, being overrun by imbeciles who started playing with GTA, have no knowledge of the robust arcade or computer gaming scene, only relationship to old games is through Nintendo or Doom, and no recollection of gaming before the internet boom. It's really all the same and quite disappointing. The hobby has been pillaged for all it was worth.

[Anonymous No.10474546]

>>10474090
I don't think it was, despite even being one of the lowest selling Nintendo consoles next to Wii U and coming in third place that gen. GameCube appealed to kids (and obviously Nintendo fans) and the gaming landscape was a little different back then especially when you consider SEGA had been a contender right up until that point. If it were not for the Wii, then I would maybe say it was unsuccessful. As a whole though I will never forget playing Melee and Sonic Adventure 2: Battle for hours on my GameCube or enjoying games like Super Mario Sunshine, Luigi's Mansion, Pikmin, and Animal Crossing. My cousin even had the Game Boy Player which expands its library tenfold. Compared to something like Saturn or Dreamcast I would not call the GameCube underrated or unsuccessful. It was still massively popular during its time, even if it wasn't close to PS2 or Xbox numbers.

[Anonymous No.10474554]

>>10474535
PC gaming was honestly better when there was a big divide between console and PC. Now it’s all the same AAA multiplats released on Windows/Xbox/PlayStation.

[Anonymous No.10474558]

I swear to god we have the exact same threads every couple weeks

[Anonymous No.10474563]

>>10474546
It was a massive flop. The thing pushed Nintendo out of the high-end console market and had the worst selling Mario and Zelda games in the series. To think it was successful is complete delusion.

[Anonymous No.10474572]

>>10474546
I had both the PS2 and GameCube and I definitely put way more time into the Cube. My PS2 was mostly relegated to being a DVD player and Final Fantasy/Silent Hill/Metal Gear box. Sony’s first party output during the sixth gen didn’t do much for me outside of Ratchet & Clank.

[Anonymous No.10474574]

>>10474563
Even then I don't think it was as bad as the Wii U or Virtual Boy, nor as obscure as the SEGA consoles that preceeded it. It's just an okay console, nothing spectacular but nothing terrible imo

[Anonymous No.10474582]

>>10474558
maybe you should consider to get a life. nobody is here to entertain your sorry ass.

[Anonymous No.10474585]

>>10474563
I think Nintendo would have ultimately been pushed out of the mainstream console market no matter what. Keep in mind that the N64 also underperformed outside of North America. They simply couldn’t directly compete with mega corps like Sony and Microsoft.

[Anonymous No.10474603]

>>10474558
>>10474582
BTFO

[Anonymous No.10474630]

>>10474574
Yeah, the GameCube didn’t do great numbers, but Nintendo always gets by with having really high attach rates from their first party stuff.

[Anonymous No.10474852]

>>10474093
It's literally just ONE (1) Sony/Sega fag making most of the console war threads. And it's likely a janny considering the threads never get deleted

Reminder that we had a similar thread as this one but it was also honest enough to mention that the GC got a lot of good games and many fan favorites and janny deleted it:
https://desuarchive.org/vr/thread/9665394/#9665394

[Anonymous No.10474965]

>>10474852
The funny thing is this OP also actually gives a decent answer to the question

[Anonymous No.10475149]

>>10474852
that thread has plenty of console wars, so I have no problem with it getting deleted.

[Anonymous No.10475159]

>>10474324
The second worst port of SADX really isn't a good example.

[Anonymous No.10475161]

>>10474090
everyone grew up

[Anonymous No.10475191]

>>10474090
Iwata

[Anonymous No.10475216]

>>10474090
As someone who was 19 when this came out, and bought it at launch after already having the PS2 this is the real reasons.

>purple cube and fisher price looking controller
In this era everything had to be cool to be successful with anyone over the age of 12, and the GameCube did not look cool, it looked quirky and that wasn't cool until recently.
>No DVD
This was HUGE deal. DVDs btfo VHS so much it's not even funny. You HAD to have a DVD player in this era and the PS2 was the cheapest you could get and it was standard in the follow up of the hugely successful and "cool" PS1 with literally no downsides. Sony, besides not having four controller ports, nailed it with the PS2 hardware.
>no Mario killer app
Nintendo was buck-broken at this point in time and made stupid software decisions. No Mario launch game, and what we did get almost a year later to the sequel of the most revolutionary video game of all time was a steaming pile of shit. Same with the Zelda games on the system, Wave Race, Star Fox and even Mario Kart. They all were vastly inferior to the N64 versions when with the lessons learned from early 3D games and new powerful hardware they should have been knocking it out of the park, like 3D party developers were doing at the time.
>controller
It didn't have all the function of the XBOX and PS2 controllers, so it made ports difficutly sometimes. Look at Twin Snakes
>Mini DVD
Same above, but look at games like GTA3, the biggest game at the time. Impossible on the GameCube, also due to the controller

Those are some of the big ones IMO.

[Anonymous No.10475279]

Nintendo unironically just copied everything that went wrong with the N64 and doubled down
>even worse unconventional game format in the form of proprietary mini DVDs, where at least N64 cartridges didn't have any load times at all, and also offering barely more storage than Dreamcast discs
>even more implied focus on appealing to kids due to the toy-ish console and gamepad, lack of GTA-style sandbox games, and a chunk of the third party games being nicktoons shit
>even smaller third party library overall and more uninteresting to anyone who's not already an ultra nintendo fanboy
If not for their massive brand recognition and solid first party games like Smash, they would have gone the way of Sega by 2006

[Anonymous No.10475306]

i think you gotta differentiate between success in sales and cultural success. while the cube may have failed nintendo'snintendo's sales expectations, it still left a definitive cultural mark in gaming.

so to say the cube was unsuccessfull is only half the truth. it remains settled in the collective mind of gaming and consoles as nintendo's last symbol representing a time when consoles were still consoles and not some Y2K oversized smartphone handhelds with motion controls.

[Anonymous No.10475312]

>>10475216
>As someone who was 19 when this came out

What were the Wii and Wii U when they came out?

[Anonymous No.10475318]

>>10474096
Wii U was my entire childhood. Tell me one reason why it shouldn't be considered retro.

[Anonymous No.10475323]

>>10474116
>were quite solid
Then why couldn't gc run ps2 games?

[Anonymous No.10475334]

>>10474501
>>10474453
Not that anon but your example didn't explain shit. What is "brute forcing" supposed to mean?

[Anonymous No.10475337]

>>10474501
Source code doesn't just get lost anon. These are major companies we're talking about.

[Anonymous No.10475350]

>>10475312
I thought the Wii was a complete joke and Nintendo would be finished. After Zelda TP Nintendo was dead to me, and I never bought another Nintendo game until just this past year on the Switch.
We had the PS3, with HD graphics, HDMI out and I had a badass Sony HD CRTV, so I didn't want some under powered Wii with gimmick controls. Needless to say I loved my PS3 and was surprised to find out that the Wii outsold it by a lot, but that was around 2013 when I found out. I was just happy playing my COD games online for 2 years in a row.

When the Wii U came out I thought it was cool. I thought the controller was a step ahead, and they were clearly giving a fuck about power again with the HD graphics.

[Anonymous No.10475354]

the number of gamecube games worth playing to completion or relative completion that weren't ports or multiplat is startlingly low, somehow lower than n64. and none of the ones on my list are clear classics either

[Anonymous No.10475384]

>>10475350
>and they were clearly giving a fuck about power again with the HD graphics.

Wii is 1.5 gamecubes.
Wii U is 3 overclocked Wiis stapled together with a massive memory upgrade.

>PS3

360 had all of the games, it took until 2010 or so for the PS3 to even begin to compete, add on to that the cell destroying most multiplat's performance, the 360 was the easy choice for most of the gen, but then the PS3 came out on top in the last few years, as most jap devs paid exlcusivity contracts with MS ran out and they ported their games to PS3, usually with all the DLC and extra content.

[Anonymous No.10475434]

>>10475334
I take it to mean that developers can use more powerful hardware to essentially force ports that were originally designed exclusively for one platform with unique hardware quirks. I’d imagine a theoretical port of MGS: Guns of the Patriots would have to be "brute forced" onto modern consoles due to its unique PS3 nature.

[Anonymous No.10475436]

>>10475323
What do you mean? The GameCube got plenty of multiplats that were also on PS2.

[Anonymous No.10475458]

>>10475337
The Japanese do a lot of dumb, nonsensical shit like that.

[Anonymous No.10475508]

>>10474090
Another /v/ tier console war thread tolerated by the shitposting tranny janny who has Sega and anti Miyamoto frescoes on his walls

[Anonymous No.10475537]

>>10474428
Having a game run solely off the raw processing power of one or more chips rather than optimizing the game to utilize the full architecture's capabilities. The Sega Saturn's VDP2 is designed to be used to do on-the-fly rendering of large scale 3D plane transformations and can also be used as a sort of VRAM buffer area for VDP1, but developers were too shitty/lazy to actually use it so most of their ports wound up relying on VDP1 only.
In a more understandable context, N64 emulation is fucking dogshit and the only thing that's made it "good" since the 90's is the fact that modern PCs run it better.