"Also in 2004 Sony released a lighter, cheaper, and streamlined version of the PS2, but it lacked the style and elegance of the original design."
How so? I think its attractive, maintains the style and look of the original in a smaller form. Its also the most durable model of the PS2 yet. Its not as nice of a leap forward in looks as the PSOne was to the original appearance of the PSX, but I think it looks good.
I'd also bring up the fact that the Thompson DVD drive in roughly 1/3 of the Xbox systems made is very poorly designed. The lucky 2/3's that got good drives will have very reliable systems.
I've heard of Game Cubes malfunctioning, but its usually been in very questionable web forums, like I remember one claiming he was on his 5th. Either people are idiots and can't take care of electronics, or he was downright lying. I'm thinking he lied.
Component cables are available for the Game Cube domestically. Nintendo regularly restocks with new runs of them (Its gone out of stock several times on their website). Nintendo simply saw that this was the best distribution method for them in the US, much like how the DS wifi USB adapter was only available through Nintendo's website until the past few weeks. And you can easily import the necessary hardware from Japan where it was more readily available, and 3rd party alternatives are available. However, it never really saw the support needed to make it worthwhile from the software standpoint, and Nintendo even discontinued the component port on the consoles themselves the last couple of years. But it wasn't just import only, it was a feature in the US too. It just didn't see the support that many would've liked.
"Not true at all. The Xbox and GC sold pretty much exactly the same."
Very true in the US. The Xbox gained a lot of momentum the past two years, leaving the Game Cube behind in the US as well as Europe.
And Alienblue, after visting game stores on various travels in different areas, the woods in Maine must be a unique place not to ever have carried the 2nd most popular console of the past five years...doesn't reflect the rest of the country at all from my experience.
Nintendo reported that as of January 2006 they have sold a total of 20.61 million Nintendo GameCube units worldwide. Microsoft reported 22 million sold up to that point. Sony has sold over 100 million. But the results don't show the fact that the Xbox has easily beat the Game Cube in Europe and the US thanks to the past two years of success MS has had. The Xbox never really even getting out of the starting gate in Japan which has had a drastic effect on these statistics.
And the Game Cube's mini disc are DVD's. The format is based on Matsushiita's (Take out a i in the name, the boards censore won't let it be posted correctly because it thinks its a swear word) optical disc technology. They don't read any differently than standard DVD disc, with the changes being in the encyption and barcode security measures that make them unreadable by most DVD drivers. The console's drive can even read and play standard mini DVD-R's by using a special debug mode which was discovered.