Nintendo's GameCube and Microsoft's Xbox herald themselves as the latest in video game evolution. But many third-party game developers see the competition among the two new consoles and Sony's year-old PlayStation2 as the real study in Darwinism -- and it is the game makers who may ultimately decide which consoles survive.
Game designer Steven Rechtschaffner, for one, is convinced "the games sell the consoles."
Rechtschaffner's "SSX Tricky" snowboarding adventure is one of several titles, including football simulator "Madden NFL 2002" and the cartoony crash-up derby "The Simpsons: Road Rage," that Electronic Arts is releasing for all three systems.
By hedging their bets, EA and other third-party game manufacturers limit their risk while waiting to see which consoles players will favor.
"We don't have to automatically develop for every console out there," said company spokeswoman Trudy Miller.
"All of these consoles will sell out for Christmas this year, but the real challenge will be to sell 10 million by next year."
If game developers pull away from a flagging system, its library of games stagnates -- which tends to drive away even more potential buyers.
Nintendo vanquished Atari and Colecovision in the 1980s. More recently, Sega's troubled Dreamcast system fell victim to Sony's PlayStation1 and Nintendo's N64.
Ironically, industry veteran Nintendo has become the most vulnerable in the new competition. With a year's head start, Sony has already entrenched itself by selling nearly 20 million PlayStation2 consoles.
Most third-party gamers expect PlayStation2 to be the core of their business this year and some have dedicated exclusive games to it, such as Konami's "Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty" and EA's "007: Agent Under Fire."
That leaves the fight mainly between the US$299 Xbox and the US$199 GameCube, with Xbox promising 15-20 launch titles while GameCube has only five to seven.
Nintendo has found itself fighting not only for consumers, but also for game developers. It has responded by focusing on younger game players with family-friendly third-party software.
Japanese game maker Konami, which developed the series of "Castlevania" monster-hunting games for Nintendo's previous systems, plans no immediate releases for GameCube.
But it does have the action flight adventure "AirForce Delta Storm" ready for the launch of Xbox. "It takes time to learn how to develop for a hardware system ... and there was some shortage of [GameCube] development kits," said Konami spokesman Chris Kramer.
TDK Mediactive, which produced the Xbox game "Shrek" based on the popular animated comedy, had the same problem, according to CEO Vincent Bitetti
"We thought "Shrek" would skew toward Nintendo's younger audience and figured GameCube would be a better fit, but we had to do the game in a very compressed period of time and could not get the GameCube development systems," Bitetti said.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary