Nintendo GameCube

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Nintendo GameCube

Manufacturer	Nintendo
Type	Video game console
Generation	Sixth generation
Release date	JP September 14, 2001 (2001-09-14) NA November 18, 2001 (2001-11-18) EU May 3, 2002 (2002-05-03) AUS May 17, 2002 (2002-05-17)
Units sold	Worldwide: 21.74 million Japan: 4.04 million Americas: 12.94 million Other: 4.77 million[1]
Media	Nintendo GameCube Game Disc
CPU	PowerPC Gekko, 485 MHz
Storage capacity	Nintendo GameCube Memory Card
Display	ATI Technologies, 162 MHz
Input	Nintendo GameCube Controller, Game Boy Advance, DK Bongos
Best-selling game	Super Smash Bros. Melee, 7.09 million (as of March 10, 2008)[2]
Predecessor	Nintendo 64
Successor	Wii

The Nintendo GameCube (ニンテンドーゲームキューブ, Nintendō Gēmukyūbu^?) is Nintendo's fourth home video game console and is part of the sixth generation console era. It is the successor to the Nintendo 64 and predecessor to Nintendo's Wii.

The Nintendo GameCube is the first Nintendo console to use optical discs as its primary storage medium, after several aborted forays by Nintendo in disc-based storage media. In contrast with the GameCube's competing consoles, the Xbox and PlayStation 2, the GameCube uses miniDVD-based discs instead of full-size DVDs. As a result, it does not have the DVD-Video playback functionality of the Xbox and PlayStation 2 nor the audio CD playback ability of previous consoles that used full size optical discs.

In addition, the GameCube also introduced a variety of connectivity options to Nintendo consoles, and was the third Nintendo console, after the Nintendo 64DD, to officially support online play. It also allowed for connectivity to the contemporary Game Boy Advance to access exclusive features of certain games.

The console was released on September 14, 2001 in Japan, November 18, 2001 in North America, May 3, 2002 in Europe and May 17, 2002 in Australia. The GameCube sold 21.74 million units worldwide.^[1]

Contents 1 Marketing 2 Hardware 2.1 Memory and storage 2.2 Technical specifications 2.3 Controller 2.4 Technical issues 3 Software library 3.1 Launch games 3.2 Market share 3.3 Online play 4 Reception and sales 4.1 Games 5 Emulation 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Marketing

Nintendo has used several advertising strategies and techniques for the GameCube. The earliest commercials displayed a rotating cube video, which would morph into the GameCube logo. A female voice whispered "GameCube". This was usually after the normal commercial for a GameCube game.^[3]

Subsequent ad campaigns had Nintendo advertising with a "Who Are You?" tangent to market the wide range of games Nintendo offers. The idea behind the "Who Are You?" campaign is that "you are what you play"; the kind of game a gamer enjoys playing suggests a dominant trait in that gamer's personality. The "Who Are You?" logo is similar to graffiti lettering. Most of the "Who Are You?" commercials advertised games developed or published by Nintendo, but some developers paid Nintendo to promote their games, using Nintendo's marketing and advertising resources.

[edit] Hardware

Like its predecessor, the Nintendo 64, the Nintendo GameCube was available in many colors. The two most common, released during the console's launch, were "Indigo" (the "default" color) and "Jet Black". Later, Nintendo released GameCubes with a "Platinum" color scheme, marketed as limited edition. "Orange Spice" GameCubes were also manufactured, but primarily only released in Japan; however, the standard controller was widely available in this color.

The GameCube's model numbers, DOL-001 and 101, are a reference to its Dolphin codename.^[4] The official accessories and peripherals have model numbers beginning with DOL as well. Also, other types of Nintendo hardware before and after the GameCube has its developer's codename as a model number. Another Dolphin reference, "Flipper" is the name of the GPU for the GameCube.^[5] Panasonic made a licensed version of the GameCube with DVD playback, called the Panasonic Q.

Benchmarks provided by third-party testing facilities indicate that Nintendo's official specifications, especially those relating to performance, may be conservative. One of Nintendo's primary objectives in designing the GameCube hardware was to overcome the perceived limitations and difficulties of programming for the Nintendo 64 architecture; thus creating an affordable, well-balanced, developer-friendly console that still performs competitively against its rivals.^[6] The development hardware kit was called the GameCube NR Reader. Model numbers for these units begin with DOT. These units allow developers to debug beta versions of games and hardware. These units were sold to developers by Nintendo at a premium price and many developers modified regular GameCubes for game beta testing because of this. The NR reader will not play regular GameCube games but only special NR discs burned by a Nintendo NR writer.

[edit] Memory and storage

Like its competitor, the PlayStation 2, the GameCube uses memory cards for saving game data (unlike the Xbox, which has a built-in hard drive). The GameCube Memory Card comes in multiple sizes, the three official size units are: 59 blocks (grey card), 251 blocks (black), and 1019 block (white). Cheaper third-party memory cards are also available.^[7]

[edit] Technical specifications

The Nintendo GameCube Game Disc is the medium for the Nintendo GameCube, created by Matsushita. Chosen to prevent unauthorized copying and to avoid licensing fees to the DVD Consortium, it is Nintendo's first non-cartridge storage method for consoles released in North America and Europe (the Famicom Disk System and Nintendo 64DD were only released in Japan). Some games which contain large amounts of voice acting or pre-rendered video (for example, Tales of Symphonia) have been released on two discs; however, only twenty five titles have been released on two discs, and no games require more than two discs. The MultiAV port is identical to the one used in Nintendo's earlier Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Nintendo 64 consoles, allowing cables from those systems to be used interchangeably.

Nintendo found that the digital AV port was used by less than one percent of users, causing the port to be removed from consoles manufactured after May 2004.^[8]

Central processing unit: Main article: Gekko (microprocessor) 485 MHz IBM "Gekko" PowerPC CPU PowerPC 750CXe based core.[9] 180 nm IBM copper-wire process. 43 mm² die. 4.9 W dissipation.[9] Roughly fifty new vector instructions[9] 32-bit ALU. 64-bit FPU, usable as 2×32-bit SIMD[9] FPU: 1.9 Gflops 64-bit enhanced PowerPC 60x front side bus to GPU/chipset. 162 MHz clock. 1.3 GB/s peak bandwidth[9] 64 KiB L1 cache (32 KiB I/32 KiB D). 8-way associative. 256 KiB on-die L2 cache. 2-way associative[9] 1125 DMIPS (dhrystone 2.1) System memory: 43 MB total non-unified RAM 24 MB MoSys 1T-SRAM (codenamed "Splash") main system RAM. 324 MHz, 64-bit bus. 2.7 GB/s bandwidth.[9] 3 MB embedded 1T-SRAM within "Flipper"".[10] Split into 1 MB texture buffer and 2 MB frame buffer.[10] 10.4 GB/s texture bandwidth (peak). 7.6 GB/s framebuffer bandwidth (peak). ~6.2 ns latency.[9] 16 MB DRAM used as buffer for DVD drive and audio. 81 MHz, 8-bit bus. 81 MB/s bandwidth.[9] Connectivity: 4 controller ports, 2 memory card slots MultiAV analog audiovisual port: interlaced YPbPr (composite, Y/C) and RGB video, stereophonic analog audio. Digital audiovisual port: digital interlaced or progressive scan YCBCR video, stereophonic I²S sound. Resolutions: 480i, 576i, 480p High-speed serial ports: 2 High-speed parallel ports: 1 Power supply output: DC12 volts x 3.25 amperes Physical Measurements: 110 mm (H) × 150 mm (W) × 161 mm (D); [4.3"(H) × 5.9"(W) × 6.3"(D)]

IBM PowerPC "Gekko" processor Graphics processing unit: 162 MHz "Flipper" LSI. 180 nm NEC eDRAM-compatible process. Co-developed by Nintendo and ArtX. 8 Gflops 4 pixel pipelines with 1 texture unit each[9] TEV "Texture EnVironment" engine (similar to Nvidia's GeForce256 "register combiners") Fixed-function hardware transform and lighting (T&L). 12+ million polygons/s in-game.[11] 648 megapixels/second (162 MHz × 4 pipelines), 648 megatexels/second (648 MP × 1 texture units) (peak) Peak triangle performance: 20,250,000 32pixel triangles/s raw and with 1 texture and lit 337,500 triangles a frame at 60 FPS 675,000 triangles a frame at 30 FPS 8 texture layers per pass, texture compression, full scene anti-aliasing[11] 8 simultaneous hardware light Bilinear, trilinear, and anisotropic texture filtering Multi-texturing, bump mapping, reflection mapping, 24-bit z-buffer 24-bit RGB/32-bit RGBA color depth Hardware limitations sometimes require a 6r+6g+6b+6a mode (18-bit color), resulting in color banding. 720 × 480 interlaced or progressive scan Integrated audio processor: Custom 81 MHz Macronix DSP Instruction memory: 8 KiB RAM, 8 KiB ROM Data memory: 8 KiB RAM, 4 KiB ROM 64 channels 16-bit 48 kHz ADPCM[11] Dolby Pro Logic II encoded within stereophonic output Storage media: For more details on this topic, see Nintendo optical discs. Matsushita (2.000 MB/s–3.125 MB/s) CAV mini-DVD-like 8 cm optical disk. Average access time: 128 ms; Capacity: 1.5 GB. Memory cards of varying sizes for saved game storage

[edit] Controller

The standard GameCube controller has a wing grip design, and is designed to fit well in the player's hands. It includes a total of eight buttons, two analog sticks, and a D-pad. The primary analog stick is on the left, with the D-pad below it. On the right are four buttons; a large green "A" button in the center, a smaller red "B" button to the left, an "X" button to the right and a "Y" button to the top. Below those, there is a yellow "C" stick, which often serves different functions, such as controlling the camera. The Start/Pause button is in the middle of the controller.

On the top of the controller there are two analog shoulder buttons marked "L" and "R", as well as one digital one marked "Z". The "L" and "R" shoulder buttons have both digital and analog capabilities. In analog mode, the shoulder buttons have an additional "click" when fully depressed. In digital mode, it will register it as digital only when fully depressed. This difference, in effect, serves as two additional buttons on the controller without the need to actually add physical buttons. This works by means of a dual-sensor system inside the controller, a slider piece, which is moved by pressing down on the shoulder button and a separate button press pad at the base.

A wireless variation of the controller was later released, called the WaveBird. It operates using radio frequency, and is powered by two AA batteries. The rumble feature was removed to accommodate this. The WaveBird controller is mainly available in two different colors, "Grey" and "Platinum" (silver). Two additional limited edition variations were made available through Club Nintendo in Japan, "Gundam Copper" (red) and "Club Nintendo" (white and light blue).

The GameCube controller comes in four major colors: "Jet Black", "Indigo", "Platinum" (silver) and "Orange Spice", all of which matching available colours of GameCube consoles. Limited edition consoles came with "Pearl" (white), "Starlight Gold" and, in Japan, "Symphonic Green" (mint green) and "Gundam Copper" (red) controllers, as well as offering a WaveBird version of the latter. Nintendo later offered an "Indigo" controller with a clear bottom, as well as limited edition "Mario Red and Blue", "Luigi Green and Blue", "Wario Yellow and Purple" and "Emerald Blue" controllers in Japan. In April 2008, Nintendo released a white controller exclusively in Japan, as a result of increased demand of the controller due to GameCube backwards compatibility on Wii and the fact that two Wii games support the controller as a primary method of control.^[12] It differs from previous editions in that it features a white cable which is 3 meters long.

The GameCube controller, in both its original wired version and the wireless WaveBird version, is compatible with the Wii. Virtual Console games and certain Wii and WiiWare games like Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Kart Wii, Sonic Unleashed and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King and several others can be played with a GameCube controller.

Anascape Ltd, a Texas-based firm, filed a lawsuit against Nintendo for patent infringements regarding Nintendo's controllers.^[13] A July 2008 verdict found that a ban would be issued preventing Nintendo from selling the regular GameCube and WaveBird controllers in the United States. Nintendo is free to continue selling the controllers pending an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.^[14]

[edit] Technical issues

Some earlier and later revisions of the GameCube consoles developed disc read problems with the optical pickup becoming thermally sensitive over time, causing read errors when the console reached normal operating temperature. Failures of this sort require replacement of the optical pickup. Affected consoles have sometimes been serviced free of charge by Nintendo even after the expiration of the warranty period.^[15]

[edit] Software library

[edit] Launch games

The GameCube launched in North America with the following twelve games:

Title	Developer	Publisher(s)
All-Star Baseball 2002	Acclaim	Acclaim
Batman Vengeance	Ubisoft	Ubisoft
Crazy Taxi	Hitmaker	Sega
Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 2	Z-Axis	Acclaim
Disney's Tarzan Untamed	Ubisoft	Ubisoft
Luigi's Mansion	Nintendo	Nintendo
Madden NFL 2002	Tiburon	EA Sports
NHL Hitz 20-02	EA Black Box	Midway
Star Wars: Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader	Factor 5	LucasArts
Super Monkey Ball	Amusement Vision	Sega
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3	Neversoft	Activision
Wave Race: Blue Storm	NST	Nintendo

One of the defining aspects of the Nintendo GameCube is the rejuvenated relationship between Nintendo and its licensees. Unlike previous generations in which Nintendo was seen by some as bullying its third-party game developers, Nintendo openly sought game-development aid on the Nintendo GameCube.^{[citation needed]} Sometimes, Nintendo would merely request that a third-party developer produce a game based on the third-party's own game franchises; other times, Nintendo would request that the third-party developer produce a game based on Nintendo's own game franchises. In both cases, Nintendo often took an active role in cooperating with the developer.^{[citation needed]} This policy on Nintendo's part resulted in exclusive third-party games for the Nintendo GameCube, and the arrival of multi-format games for the console.

[edit] Market share

Despite Nintendo's efforts, the GameCube failed to reclaim the market share lost by its predecessor, the Nintendo 64. It was in third place compared to its competitors, Sony's PlayStation 2 and Microsoft's Xbox (the latter was discontinued in 2006). The console's "family-friendly" appeal and lack of third-party support skewed the GameCube toward a younger market (see chart), which represents a minority of the gaming population. Some third-party games popular with teenagers or adults, such as first-person shooters and the controversial Grand Theft Auto series, skipped a GameCube port in favor of the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. The GameCube does, however, have over forty M (for Mature) rated games, a considerably larger amount than Nintendo's previous consoles.^{[citation needed]}

Also, due to Nintendo's lack of support for the online capabilities of the GameCube, as opposed to Microsoft, Sega, and later Sony, who actively promoted online gaming by releasing first-party online titles and soliciting developers, multi-platform games with online functionality were released offline-only on the GameCube. Although online support was added in late 2002 and both Sony and Nintendo followed a similar decentralized online model (in contrast to the centralized Xbox Live), lower sales of the GameCube versions of games during its launch year precluded developers from including online support. The 1.5 gigabyte proprietary disc format may also have been a limiting factor since the Xbox and PS2 used the 8.5 GB Dual-Layer DVD. However, the Nintendo disc still has sufficient room for most games, although a few require an extra disc or, more rarely, have less content than other versions, and video compression for some games is slightly more apparent.

The strong preference of GameCube owners for first-party games did not benefit third-party developers. Cross-platform games—such as sports franchises released by Electronic Arts—sold far below their PlayStation 2 and Xbox counterparts, prompting developers to scale back or completely cease support for the GameCube. After several years of losing money from developing for Nintendo's console, Eidos Interactive announced in September 2003 that it would end support for the GameCube, canceling several games that were in development.^[16] Since then, however, Eidos has resumed development^[17] of GameCube titles, releasing hit games such as Lego Star Wars: The Video Game and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Legend. Due to sagging sales, Nintendo was forced to cut GameCube production for a limited time in order to sell off surpluses.^{[citation needed]} In October 2002, Nintendo issued a profit warning.^[18] Sales rebounded slightly after a price drop to US$99 on September 24, 2003^[19] and the release of the The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition bundle. A demo disc, the "Nintendo GameCube Preview Disc", was also released in a bundle in 2003.^{[citation needed]} Since this period, GameCube sales continued to be steady, particularly in Japan,^{[citation needed]} but the GameCube was still in third place in worldwide sales during the sixth generation era.

Some third-party companies, such as Ubisoft, THQ, Disney Interactive Studios, Humongous Entertainment and EA Sports, continued to release GameCube games in 2007.^{[20][21][22][23]} These titles include TMNT, Meet the Robinsons, Surf's Up, Ratatouille and Madden NFL 08.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Online play

The GameCube was at one point online compatible by using a GameCube Modem Adapter or Broadband Adapter, though the only four games that had an online component were Homeland, Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II, Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II Plus and Phantasy Star Online Episode III: C.A.R.D. Revolution. This online play was ended as of April 2007, but LAN gameplay is still available for the three titles that originally supported it: Mario Kart Double Dash!!, 1080° Avalanche and Kirby Air Ride. There are some third-party PC applications such as Warp Pipe and XLink Kai that allows online play of these three games by tunneling the network traffic through a computer and across the Internet, though this is not supported by Nintendo.

[edit] Reception and sales

This section requires expansion.

The GameCube sold nearly 22 million units during its lifespan,^[1] lagging far behind the 140 million^[24] PlayStation 2 consoles sold. The GameCube did not surpass its predecessor, the Nintendo 64, in sales and finished its generation slightly behind the Xbox, which sold 24 million units before being discontinued.

[edit] Games

The number of games released for the console exceeds 600, with 208.56 million GameCube games sold as of June 30, 2008.^[1]

[edit] Emulation

See also: Dolphin (emulator)

[edit] See also

• Nintendo GameCube accessories
• Nintendo GameCube Linux

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: GameCube

• Nintendo GameCube Official webpage by Nintendo of America
• Nintendo GameCube at Nintendo.com (archived versions at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine)
• GameCube at the Open Directory Project

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