This week's question: According to retail release lists, PS2 and Xbox have about 20 games apiece coming out -- many of them top-quality efforts -- in April. Oppositely, GameCube owners will only see a single new release for the month. The question is, how do you hope to maintain a GameCube audience if you don't release new games on a consistent basis?
George Harrison, senior vice President of marketing, Nintendo of America: From the retail lists we've seen, several of the triple-A titles you mention launching on other systems are being carried over from late Q4 of last year as titles that didn't quite make it in time for the holiday season. This kind of spill-over is natural in Q1 and has definitely placed a high number of titles on the calendar for some systems in April.
Looking ahead towards early summer, Nintendo GameCube fans will soon get their hands on Geist, Nintendo Pennant Chase Baseball, Killer 7, Rainbow Six: Lockdown, Medal of Honor: European Assault, Batman Begins, Fantastic Four, and more. And that's just in the month of June alone. So don't let the month of April fool you -- there are plenty of Nintendo GameCube hits to fill your gameplay calendars between now and this holiday season as fans anxiously count the days until the next Legend of Zelda hits store shelves. Looking at the complete 2005 calendar, Nintendo GameCube has over 60 titles set to ship from Nintendo and all major publishers this year alone.
The late Q1 and early Q2 periods are not traditionally the busiest time for launching new titles. But periods of slow product release are nothing new for the games industry. Though we may not have many Nintendo GameCube products on the horizon for April, we do have a healthy selection of new handheld products for the Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance, including Polarium, which is a triple-A puzzle title soon to be used in the same sentence as Tetris around the world.
