Nintendo interview

Computer and Video Games chats with Nintendo's European product manager Marko Hein as he talks about Nintendo's plans for the GameCube and beyond:

In terms of the GameCube's sales, they dropped below a thousand units per week in the UK for the first time recently, and for a while now the Xbox has been outselling it by about three-to-one per week here. How do you intend to turn that around?

Hein: First of all we experienced quite dramatically that the old formula for the system is still valid. When we released Zelda The Wind Waker, the hardware sales tripled in this week. That means we have to think very carefully about what types of games we are releasing.

And I think when I look at the release list until Christmas, and in 2004, I'm quite confident that we can convince the consumers to buy a GameCube before Christmas, and not another console.

Soul Calibur II is coming, with Link as a playable character, and also F-Zero GX, which is, I think, the best racing game you can get on a console; then there's Mario Kart which is coming for Christmas and will be very big for us.

And then there's the third-party publishers as well, with the Capcom games, Viewtiful Joe and PN03; Metal Gear Solid's coming, Final Fantasy's coming - I think we've never had such an impressive line-up for Christmas and directly afterwards. So I think this will convince consumers to come back to GameCube.