As E3 winds down, it becomes painfully clear to me that Nintendo needs one thing when it finally launches the Gamecube system: a $125 price tag. Yes, a low price always seems an obvious choice. But it's not always the best decision for a console launch. In the case of the Gamecube, however, that price tag is almost essential. With such a price, the Gamecube could help Nintendo to finally dominate a large portion of the videogame world once more. It could help Nintendo to take back that larger piece it once had.
We all saw E3. It's still going as I write this, but not for long. The verdict is in already: Nintendo absolutely stole the show. They wowed audiences with not only stunning software, but more of it than anyone could have imagined. What's more, there were new franchises, and they looked quite good. Nothing shown by Nintendo looked bad. Sure, it might not have appealed to everyone, but it all looked good. Every title had a large audience that found it fantastic.
So now we have months and months to wait before the Gamecube releases, and still we don't know the price. Nintendo plans to reveal it soon. And I say that the number they reveal will determine how well Nintendo does. The higher the number, the lower their chances of success. So, just why do I feel that $125 is the magical number?
Let's take a look at what Nintendo has done well in the past, and go from there. The NES launched at a fairly high price, I believe. By the time my parents bought one with Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt, as well as a zapper, it had dropped to $109.00. Not bad. In fact, very good. It was a successful system because it ended up being cheap for parents to buy it. And then there was the SNES, which launched with a game and a $199.00 price. Oh, and two controllers, I think. Not bad. People bought it, especially as it dropped to $139.99 for the holiday season. Oh, and let's not forget the Game Boy systems, which have been $99.00 almost since launch. So the average price for a successful Nintendo system? About $125.00.
Now we have Sony competing. They have a lead on Nintendo with the Sony Playstation 2, a system plenty of people have boughten, most especially in Japan. Okay. How much do they cost right now? Three hundred bucks. But how long will it stay that way? Not long. They'll drop to about $200 or $250 around the time the Gamecube launches on November 5. And other competition will be the XBox, three days later. At least in America.
So, suppose the Gamecube launched at $125 in Japan (or the equivalent; I'm not good with yen). That would put it at half the price of the Playstation 2. And this is a sytem (the Gamecube) with a ton of must-own titles. The Playstation 2 still won't have many must-owns. Gamers who haven't commited can get a Gamecube with tons of great software, or they can get a Playstation 2 with half the good titles at about twice the price. It's a magical number. And those who already have and are tired of their PS2's could sell them and some games and have enough to get a new Nintendo Gamecube. A magical situation.
You see the potential here? It would work absolutely as well in America. But Japan is what matters. That sounds funny coming from an American, I know, but it's true. Dreamcast did well in America but horribly in Japan. And Sega is developing software, now. So if Nintendo is to avoid that, they need a user base in Japan. They need one badly.
The user base is important for one reason that leads into another: software sales. Nintendo needs to sell tons of software to make it big. The more systems available to and owned by consumers, the more software can be sold. And the more software that consistently sells, the more third party developers sit up and take notice. The more the developers notice, the more they develop. The more they develop, the more Gamecubes sell. The more Gamecubes sell, the more software sells. Pretty soon Nintendo can have a skyscraper where right now they're struggling to build a basement. It all depends on that concrete, teh $125 price tag.
I know that Nintendo can launch at $200 and make some profits, the first company to launch a console and do so. That would put them in the record books. But it wouldn't put them in a good position in the console race. That's why I'm hoping Nintendo will take a loss and launch the console at $125. They'll gain so much more in the long run. And if they're going to survive, they have to stop thinking short term.
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