Compared to 2002, last year was mostly a success for Nintendo, but it couldn’t have really gone much worse…

In the continued battle of words, Nintendo today released figures in an attempt to convince the world that the GameCube isn’t entirely dead in Europe.<br><br>Claiming to have had the biggest Christmas period to date for the GameCube, which is hardly surprising, the figures claim that sales have increased by 88% across Europe compared to the same period last year – bringing the total European sales of the GameCube close to 3 million.<br><br>Recognising the importance of actually releasing games, Nintendo claim that the likes of ‘Mario Kart: Double Dash’ and to a lesser degree ‘1080 Avalanche’ and ‘Mario Party 5’, boosted sales of GameCube software by 45% compared to the same period last year. However it should be noted that you’d expect sales to increase from the quite frankly appalling position Nintendo found themselves in 2002.<br><br>Once again the GameBoy Advance continues to grow from strength to strength, with sales for the full calendar year up by 33%. In what appears to be an effort to squeeze the figures to support what they’re saying, Nintendo would only talk about sales of GBA software during the aforementioned two-month Christmas period, in which the Japanese publisher enjoyed a 104% increase, buoyed by the release of ‘Pokemon Sapphire’ and ‘Pokemon Ruby’.<br><br>Whilst we love to see Nintendo doing well and think it’s a shame that European gamers have largely ignored their efforts, it has to be said that we’re getting a little tired of this war of words; statistics can be used to back up anything, whilst the subtle manipulation of stats seen in this Press Release continues to muddy the water – let’s just have the numbers of installed units from now on please.<br><br>Whilst there are certainly some great games scheduled for release in 2004 on the GameCube, we’re still hoping that Nintendo have a few aces remaining up its sleeve, as the release schedule for the first half of 2004 does make for a barren reading.