Nintendo becoming next SEGA

Don't get me wrong, I like Nintendo.\nAfter Atari crashed the video game market in 1983 with abysmal sales of their E.T. game, who was it but Nintendo to resurrect the home console in North America. If it weren't for the NES, dorms across the campus would have a big blank spot in front of their TVs where a PlayStation 2, GameCube or Xbox now resides.\nI fondly remember days long past when I would sit in front of the TV playing classics like Super Mario Bros. 3 and The Legend of Zelda on Nintendo's bulky grey box.\nI even followed Mario into 3-D when the Nintendo 64 was released in 1996. And to this day, when I'm on a long road trip, or just killing time between classes, I'll whip out my shiny cobalt GameBoy Advance SP and race a few laps of Mario Kart.\nThen, in 2001, Nintendo unveiled their next generation console, the GameCube, and things have been going down hill for them ever since.\nWhile Sony and Microsoft's machines can play CDs, DVDs and even let gamers rip music to the hard drive in the case of the Xbox, Nintendo chose to release a console that can play games.\nThe launch games weren't even that great. Waverace: Blue Storm was a pale imitation of the N64 classic, and Luigi's Mansion couldn't compare to any game the plumber's older brother starred in.\nLast winter, the Japanese electronics giant bounced back with hits like Mario Sunshine and Metroid Prime, but 2003 has just seen blow after blow for the company. SEGA announced last spring that they would no longer produce sports games for the GameCube, and publishers Eidos and Acclaim followed suit this fall, canceling all of their upcoming lineups.\nOther publishers such as Atari, who recently cancelled the GCN version of Driver 3, are picking and choosing what games to release for the system. In September, the company announced their first loss since going public in 1962. Nintendo predicted a profit of $135 million for the first half of the fiscal year, but now predicts a loss of $27 million.\nWith only 80,000 GameCubes sold between April and June, the GameBoy Advance is the only thing keeping Nintendo from much bigger losses. In fact, it's been the success of the company's handhelds that have kept them in the black the past few years as Sony's domination of the console market has grown.\nLate last month, Nintendo dropped the price of a new GameCube from $149 to $99, and since then some outlets have reported sales of the system have quadrupled. \nI just have to wonder though if this is too little too late.\nLet's take a little trip back in time to the recent downward spiral of former console manufacturer, SEGA.\nIn the early '90s, SEGA was riding high on the success of their Genesis. Then in 1995 they released a system called the Saturn to little fanfare. This system launched without a Sonic game, SEGA's mascot character, much like the GameCube launched without a Mario game.\nThe Saturn struggled for three years as SEGA released lackluster sequels for the system and swore up and down its successor would be better. \nIn 1999, they released the Dreamcast. At the time it was the most powerful system available, featuring a strong lineup of launch games, and many third party publishers who had passed up the Saturn pledged support for the DC.\nThen the momentum of the strong launch slowed to a crawl. Third parties dropped the system, SEGA canceled many of their own upcoming games and massive price drops soon followed.\nEventually SEGA abandoned the DC in 2001 and now makes games for Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft's consoles. It was a smart business move. If they hadn't we might not have any SEGA at all today.\nNintendo hasn't screwed up quite as badly as SEGA did with the Saturn, but they're certainly on the same path. Even the future success of Nintendo's cash cow, the GameBoy, is in question as Sony is releasing a competitor, the Playstation Portable, late next year.\nYet for some reason Nintendo has pledged to go down fighting. \nSuccessors to both the GCN and GBA are in the works. It would break my heart to see the makers of Mario make the move to multi-console gaming, but if they don't, gamers might not have any classic Nintendo characters to play with some day.\nAnd that would break my heart even more.