[larodi]

Incredible the pace gaming companies in Japan did innovate with chips and boards and everything during this era. While PCs were following a somewhat slow pace, guys at SEGA, Nintendo, Namco, Capcom and similar were literally making innovation by the hour, and commercializing it. A lot to learn from their stories.

[Leynos]

Sadly, like everything, the arcades are now commodity hardware. Everyone just started putting out industrial PC based systems and shipping the games on hard drives

[jjice]

I think it's also a benefit in someways though. Preservation should be much easier and more accessible this way. Also maintainability.

[larodi]

Well what I mean is how they been printing PCBs and experimenting. Perhaps has lot to do with the then-very vivid generation. Sadly Japan is aging and very closed to outer influx, so this culture may as easily die at all.

[PlatoIsADisease]

Wild to see how far they've fallen. Although I think this was basically the turning point for Nintendo. The GC intentionally avoided competing(at least on graphics) and was still a financial success.

From there, Nintendo relied on gimmicks and corporate mascots/IP.

I guess sega was a few years ahead of them on their own timeline.

[fredoralive]

The Gamecube was competitive on graphics with PS2 and Xbox. It was the Wii where there console side moved away from keeping up in the cutting edge graphics race.

I’m not sure how successful it was, it was outsold by Xbox and PS2. Although the Xbox was a massive money pit for Microsoft. At least in Europe the Gamecube began to disappear from retail a fair bit before the Wii was out as well. Still, got things like a Wavebird for cheap on clearance though…

[to11mtm]

I think the big thing that held gamecube back was the lack of other 'utility', at least as someone who was in college at the time.

Can't play DVDs (PS2, or XBox with the remote accessory,) can't even play audio CDs. Let's remember that this was also an era where half or less of the on campus freshmen had a desktop computer for their dorm, let alone something like a laptop.

That said one could also argue that Nintendo was more focused on mobile at the time, between the GBA and DS, both of which certainly carried them through that era.

I think one could argue that the DS's success alongside the challenges Gamecube had for adoption, led to the philosophy involved in the Wii's design.

[mikkupikku]

True. I remember there was a window of time in which the PS2 was the cheapest DVD player you could get, or at least the cheapest in most stores. That was about the time when most consumers were feeling pressure to drop VHS. It was also pretty common for people to have CD binders full of pirated movies on DVD, very popular in colleges then, and kids bringing home those huge stashes of movies also motivated a lot of people to replace their VCRs. The PS2 with it's DVD playing functionality was well timed and well priced.

[BHSPitMonkey]

I can't recall if the PS2 was cheaper than available DVD players when it launched, but I do distinctly remember it being true of the PS3 and Blu-ray for some time given how new it was then

[to11mtm]

PS2 was cheaper at announce time, but by launch there were units priced 'competitively' (not always with PS2's capabilities such as ability to do component out, but almost always with a better UX).

I should note the 'other' option that came up back then at college was just tossing a DVD Drive in a computer that they had or had purchased; by that point a majority/plurality of new/recent desktops had enough horsepower to do it, though drives were still fairly expensive...

[mikkupikku]

> From there, Nintendo relied on gimmicks and corporate mascots/IP.

I think you're underselling the role of their game design expertise. They figured out that there's more to games than high fidelity graphics, a concept which has somehow alluded most AAA game studios.

[mpyne]

Yeah, their "corporate mascots" are valuable IP because they are associated with fun games. The games aren't fun because of the mascots, it's the other way around.

[izacus]

Forming a relationship with children when they're most impressionable for marketing and later nostalgia trips helps too.