Okay, I know many of you are tired of seeing people supporting the Xbox. Yes, I love the GameCube and all Nintendo games, but I must also be in favor of those Xbox fanboys...
GameCube and Xbox launched around the same time in November of 2001 (GC: Nov. 18, Xbox: Nov. 15). During the launches of both competing systems, GameCube had 3 top games at its disposal: Luigi's Mansion, Wave Race: Blue Storm, and Super Monkey Ball. Xbox had Dead or Alive and Halo (Halo being the top seller for that time).
A year has passed, and already the GameCube has had lots more success than the Xbox. Top games from Nintendo included: Super Smash Bros. Melee, Animal Crossing, Super Mario Sunshine, StarFox Adventures (Chupperson Weird's favorite game)...the list goes on.
The past year for Xbox has been less exciting. Titles like Blinx: The Timesweeper, NFL Fever, and Project Gotham Racing have failed to make much of an impact. Also, a huge lack of exclusive 3rd-party support have really hurt sales of the Xbox in Japan and Europe...not too good for Microsoft's first effort of console manufacturing.
Currently, the Xbox has had slightly better sales due to the introduction of Xbox Live, a "games only" online service. That product sold fairly well, and ironically, it has gained a fairly large amount of 3rd-party support...
And for GameCube, well these past months have been amazing for Nintendo's little purple cube. Superior games like Super Mario Sunshine and StarFox Adventures have boosted sales of GameCube hardware significantly. And Metroid Prime has already been voted "Game of the Year" in many online polls...
The future? Well it seems the GameCube has a much better future ahead. The release of Zelda: The Wind Waker will surely top the charts. Plus, the amount of exclusive 3rd-party support from Capcom, Sega, and Square will help the GameCube get an even larger hold on the foreign market.
And Xbox... Well let's just say that Microsoft had better come up with a better strategy for the foreign market. Because Xbox is still losing sales in Japan and Europe. Xbox Live is still too early to gain a significant amount of success - the online service hasn't even been released worldwide yet! The future certainly does not look bright for Microsoft's big monstrosity.
For now, we should all be happy that Nintendo is in the lead...and continue to enjoy the amount of high-quality games that Nintendo and it's supporters have made for us! Way to go Nintendo, keep up the great work!
Edited by - Mario Maniac on 12/11/2002 5:33:48 PM
