Only worth £50 now. :S

[UK Jester]

All of the Next Gen consoles are now in development. Nintendo don't want to talk Next Gen but have been forced to drop hints like the D Pad leak. All the Nintendo magazines are now raving about the DS (and I'm sick to my back teeth of the flaming thing). Microsoft and Sony have had huge games released for their consoles backed up with strong advertising campaigns aimed at the adult market who have jobs and money. Nintendo released Donkey Konga with adverts on Challenge and a tour of the UK with events aimed at children who normally don't have 40 quid spare. Nintendo decides to use Mario Kart DD and Pokemon Collesium (1 year and half a year old already) as bundles to sell new Gamecubes. Nintendo releases Metroid Prime 2 in a head to head with GTA: SA and Halo 2, but its only advertised in magazines unlike the other two which use the media of Cinema and Television. Nintendo wishes to maintain a family image for the console, the Xbox goes for the teenage to early twenties demographic while the Playstation 2 uses backwards compatibilty to keep the previous generation owners interested. Nintendo fails to release a 5 star launch game staring Link or Mario, it takes years to release games that should have been ready at the begining. Nintendo is behind the times by only just converting to disks and shunning the online gamers. Allegedly Nintendo failed to put it's money in GAMEs hands like Sony and Microsoft, so the Cube gets 2 shelves at the back of the store. Companies abandon the Cube because the games perform badly, although this causes the loss of mostly poor quality games it also causes the loss of quality games like Broken Sword, Burnout 3 and the high unit selling FIFA European Championship 2004. As the casual gamer heres about the loss of developers for the Gamecube he becomes even less likely to get a Cube. Nintendo fails to keep sweet companies with hard cash so that exclusives like the Capcom 5 vanish or go multi-format (how many of us Cube owners would have not brought an Xbox or PS2 if Halo or GTA: VC had been multi-format).

The list goes on and on just like my above rant. The Nintendo Fanboy can rant and rave about how great the diminishing games due for realse are, they can keep flaming the PS2 casual gamers that have ruined the gaming industry. But the truth is Nintendo has continued to make a profit in the handheld market. It's not lost money on the Gamecube and its tough if we don't like it. Shops will drop the Gamecube because it has failed to sell, business is about making profit and clearing out the clag at cheap prices to make room for the products that do sell.

Regards

UK Jester