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News   GameCube Online Info Revealed
- Posted By Mike Schneider, 08.13.2001

Nikkei News has supplied the world with its first true breath of Online information for the GameCube, other than the hardware components that Nintendo displayed at E³.

Have a look at their news story:

OSAKA (Nikkei)--Nintendo Co. (7974) plans next year to make its new video-game machine, Nintendo GameCube, Internet accessible, company sources said Monday.

The company will release a modem attachment, which will be sold separately.

Along with Nintendo, Sega Corp. (7964) will also release game software for Nintendo's Net-compatible GameCube console.

Sega will release by March next year Phantasy Star Online, a roll-playing game software for GameCube that enables users to participate in a virtual world with other people connected via the Internet.

The Phantasy Star Online game developed for Sega's Dreamcast machine already has 300,000 members nationwide, the largest for any Internet game in Japan.

Nintendo will release GameCube, successor to the Nintendo 64 game machine, in September for the domestic market and in November in North America.

The company expects to ship 2.5 million units worldwide by the end of this year.

PlayStation 2, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.'s popular game console, is already Net accessible.


Obviously then, it can be concluded that Nintendo will have a big gun of its own available around March, to push its online gaming for all of its worth.

What game will it be?

One candidate could be a Pokemon game done online. The mass appeal of that alone would ensure GameCube wasn't an online flop, and anyone else remember the Pokemon clip shown at Spaceworld 2000?

Another possibility could be from Rare. Rumors flew that Perfect Dark was shown behind closed doors at E³, and what better way to get online users than to build off one of the most successful console multiplayer brands of all-time [for the sake of the argument, I'm combining Goldeneye and Perfect Dark into one franchise... PD's sales totals were actually somewhat disappointing]?

Finally, Miyamoto-san himself has excitedly talked about online gaming in the past. He's made reference to an idea of having multiple people control one robot as a team, for instance. Heck, even the next Zelda game could be thrown into the online world some way, I'm sure -- though that seems like a more unlikely possibility since Zelda has long been a solo adventure.


Hopefully Spaceworld 2001 will answer all...

Source: Nihon Keizai Shimbun