Nintendo to Wii everywhere as GameCube gone for good

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 23 February 2007 22:36

Your IT - Entertainment

Vale, GameCube… Nintendo has put you back in the box, for you’ll be manufactured no more as Nintendo focuses on getting as much Wii in consumer’s homes as possible.

The future for Nintendo is now the Wii and the DS handheld games console, as the GameCube is retired after years of faithful service.

UPDATE: Now it seems that Nintendo UK is saying that GameCube production hasn't stopped after all, as reported in our new article "WTF? Wii want to know: is GameCube gone or not?". The original article follows.

We learnt this from an extensive GameDaily interview with Nintendo of America’s Marketing director, Perrin Kaplan, where she said in an answer to a question that: “True. Are we producing any more GameCubes? No. But do we have the inventory there for people to still purchase? Yes.”

So the GameCube will be in stores as long as supplies last, with future GameCube playability offered by the Wii’s inbuilt GameCube compatibility.

In the interview, Kaplan was asked about upgraded Wii models that come with features such as DVD playback or new designs, as happened when the original and larger Nintendo DS was slimmed down into the svelte Nintendo DS Lite, with both DS models still available in a range of colours.

Questions were asked about future Wii features and when more games were on the way, with Kaplan claiming 27 games due between now and July, and plenty of titles on the Virtual Arcade to purchase arriving regularly with more on the way.

Additional Wii functionality was hinted at, with no promises made other than a more or less ‘watch this space’ where all will be revealed.

Nintendo are very pleased with Wii sales so far, having internally predicted the kinds of numbers that have actually ended up selling, and firmly promise that there are plenty of exciting games on the way, including classics like Metroid, Mario and more.

So, goodbye GameCube. You only ended up as the no.3 games console in the last generation race, but still provided millions of children around the globe with plenty of Mario memories, and led the way to the wondrous Wii, which, despite more Xbox 360s in consumers hands thanks to a year-long sales lead, is so far arguably leading the next-gen race in the face of heavy PS3 and Xbox 360 competition.