Mod the parent up! (Score 1)

The AC parent nailed it dead on. I've been in the industry for nearly seven years now, and I have some very close friends who work at Nintendo HQ. They have flat out told me that many of the game publishing companies expect Nintendo to come along with a dumptruck of money, and basically pay them in order to make GC games. Why? Because that's what Microsoft does in order to get XBox support. MS has had to bribe everyone in the industry in order to get the amount of third party games onto the shelves that they have. (And, well, it seems to have worked!) But as a result, the XBox division has posted alot of losses since it was started. Yeah, a good portion of it is hardware costs, but don't underestimate the bribery factor. Microsoft is the only company in the world with enough money to buy their way into anything... and they sure bought their way into the video game biz. Sony apparently does some incentives for the big players, but because PS2 games sell tons of units due to the installed base, there's already quite a compelling business case for develpoing PS2 games.

Anyways, back to Nintendo. Rumor has it that the 'cube was making $$$ the first day it was on sale. No one can say that about PS2 or XBox. I was rather impressed. I wouldn't be suprised if the DS and Revolution follow the same path. Nintendo plays by a different set of rules than their competitors, and it looks to me like they will keep the money coming in.. with or without the support of the rest of the industry. Guess we'll see.