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What Games Sell for GameCube?

What Games Sell for GameCube?

I sat down a week ago with a debate going on in my mind. Are Nintendo gamers really notorious for giving third party games the shaft? For what its worth, Im able to see both sides of the fence on the issue. Its a well-known fact that most cross-platform games sell more copies for Playstation 2 than GameCube. What the charts indicate looks like fairly solid support for this belief. Most of what Ive read on the forums perpetuates the belief that Nintendo gamers arent interested in third party games. For whatever reason some of us have against third parties, the fact is that GameCube owners either choose to buy games for other consoles, or they dont buy them at all.

I dont want to believe its so simple, though. As a longtime owner of Nintendo consoles, I know what my favorite games are. I know the majority of my collection consists of Nintendo published game titles. I also know that I have absolutely nothing against third party publishers. I can look in the top drawer of my dresser and prove it. At least forty-percent of the games I own for GameCube are third party titles. I cant account for every Nintendo fan, but I consider myself to be one of Nintendos biggest supporters. And I dont perpetuate this ideal that third party publishers are bad.

So I went to the sales charts hoping to find something that could dispel the belief. I began scanning the top fifty best selling games for the GameCube. Its what most well informed readers would expect. Nine of the top ten selling games for GameCube are all Nintendo published. The lone third party title is a Sonic the Hedgehog game (Sonic Adventure 2 Battle), which is ironic since every title in the top ten features a main mascot except for Star WarsStar Wars has Luke Skywalker, though, and hes good enough. This is a disheartening, though fully expected, revelation. The following games leading through the top twenty were all much of the same.

It occurred to me that this is quite a logical result. The best games are going to have the most recognizable characters. This is part of what drives sales, and I wouldnt expect any different from any other console. Playstation 2 has Jak and Daxter while Xbox has Master Chief. Every console has flagship franchises that sell bucket loads of games. I decided to mosey over to the Playstation 2 sales charts to confirm my gut feeling.

What I saw on the Playstation 2 chart was to my dismay, albeit expected, it was expected if one had been following forum chatter over the years. I saw the huge sales totals for the Grand Theft Auto games. I was pleased to see Gran Turismo A-Spec at number three on the chart. I expected to see Final Fantasy near the top (Final Fantasy X was number seven on the list). I was mortified to see Madden Football claiming the fourth and fifth top seller spots. Im a fan of the Madden Football series. I have Madden 2002 and Madden 2005. I cant fathom so many people buying the games every year. Madden 2002 captured the thirteenth spot, also.

This pattern is widespread for the Playstation 2. Four of the top ten selling games for PS2 are on other consoles. Of the top fifty selling games for PS2, I know, without even checking, that at least twenty-five of the games are not exclusive to Playstation. This is a stark contrast to GameCube where thirty-two of the top fifty are GameCube exclusive. And seventeen of the top twenty games are Nintendo exclusive.

This is a well-defined trend in software sales that lends support to the idea that Nintendo gamers have very specific tastes that exclude third party titles. On the surface, it would appear Nintendo gamers only buy games with Nintendo mascots or well-known heroes in them. A direct comparison of Mario Kart sales to F-Zero sales is immediate proof of this. Mario Kart: Double Dash!! is akin to an all-star cast of characters battling it out in a not so different fashion from Super Smash Brothers: Meleethese titles are number two and number one on the chart, respectively. Mario Kart has sold 1,636,625 copies since November of 2003. F-Zero GX has been on shelves roughly three months longer and sold 225,249 copies. Despite an extensive advertisement campaign, a price cut for the GameCube hardware, and a garage feature that lets players build their own futuristic racecar, F-Zero GX was unable to sell. It lacked a key mascotCaptain Falcon doesnt have wide appeal.

A further comparison, to add insult to injury, pits F-Zero GX against Gran Turismo A-Spec. Before anyone starts yelling profanities at his/her monitor, lets assume its perfectly reasonable to compare the two racers. Gran Turismo is obviously a real car simulation racing game with hundreds of fully detailed automobiles that many of us recognize and love (I like Hondas and Mitsubishis!). F-Zero GX is ahead of its time in ways that boggle the mind, but it features detailed tracks, awesome special effects, and a garage where players get to build and customize racers. It even features a paint shop for original decal creation. All of this could not save F-Zero GX, and, in a sense, Segas efforts were for naught.

Gran Turismo A-Spec sold 3,515,501 copies, whereas F-Zero GX obviously failed to sell even 300,000 copies. Mario Kart: Double Dash!! annihilated F-Zero with far less in my opinion. This perpetuates the idea that the only games that sell on GameCube are mascot games and games published by Nintendo. This even proves that Nintendo can struggle to sell games on its console. Among the reasons for F-Zeros struggle are theories that Soul Calibur 2 overshadowed it. Its even plausible that gamers were anticipating Mario Kart so many months in advance. This doesnt dispel the point, obviously. The Sega developed and Nintendo published F-Zero GX was even outsold by Eternal Darkness.

I dont actually subscribe to the idea that Nintendo gamers are only interested in Nintendo games. We are a diverse population of gamers who refuse to live without Nintendo games. Only the dumbest of our population are closed-minded to good games coming from other publishers. With what I knew after looking over the Playstation 2 chart, I had a new question in mind: What games do sell on GameCube?

At first glance, this is not apparent. Once upon a time, people would say platformers sell on Nintendo consoles. Nintendo gamers love platformers, right? Those basically went extinct during the polygon revolution in my opinion. Super Mario Sunshine is nothing more than an action game with a focus on exploration and puzzle solving. Metroid Prime is obviously a first person shooter that also falls into the action genre. So, then I thought, perhaps, its action games that Nintendo gamers love. A quick run down of the top ten best seller list turns up five action titles. But, of these titles, they hardly hold anything in common. They range from side-scrolling fighters to space combat games. The only apparent fact is that a lot of sub-genres are grouped as action games.

I found I was getting nowhere in my mission to uncover what truly sells on Nintendo consoles. I refused to side with the myth that third party games dont sell on Nintendo like they do for Playstation. I couldnt figure how (or why) so many ordinary games were selling like crack for the Playstation 2. Furthermore, I couldnt understand why so many people bashed GameCube software sales. I want to look beyond the numbers without getting lost in digression over hypothetical reasons that are more a matter of opinion and ethics. I sat down and started crunching some numbers.