smegforbrain said:
And as I have said, Nintendo isn't a company that has money to throw around.
Actually they have about $6 billion in reserves. There was a big lawsuit of some kind pending in Europe some time ago (don't remember offhand what it was about) and they had been building up reserves in case something went wrong, but it never got off the ground... so N does, in fact, have money to throw around, they just don't want to do it.
You don't see them jumping on the online bandwagon. Why? They're rather wait until it's profitable (if ever) before just copying somebody elses work.
It's because this generation, online support has pretty much proved itself to be little more than a gimmick. Xbox Live has garnered very nice support, but for the most part, very few console gamers use any online features with any regularity. Nintendo will certainly have a good online service ready for next gen, but for this one they're waiting for netplay to catch on more.
GameCube has been all about profit from day one.
They're not interesting in being the pioneer, and it's already bitten them in the ass a few times in the past. It will continue to do so.
That's true, to an extent... but with N64, while they were pioneers in some architectural aspects, they were too traditional with the cartridge interface - that's what bit them, not their innovation.
Nintendo's well on it's way to removing itself from the console business.
Only in the minds of irritating Sony and MS fanpeople...