E3 2003: GC2 Comes Early
Iwata reiterates that the GameCube successor won't launch after Microsoft's and Sony's next-gen consoles.
May 13, 2003 - At Nintendo's E3 press conference, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata once again confirmed that Nintendo is not planning to play catch-up with Sony with its next console release.
"Nintendo has never been more focused," said Iwata during his presentation on the state of Nintendo and the industry. "We will not retreat." Iwata said that GameCube's successor is long in the works and that this time around, there would be no head-start for the competition.
GameCube launched a full year after PlayStation 2. Given the convergence of technology and, as it claims, the negligible differences between the consoles' raw hardware power, Nintendo believes that the one year head-start was a crucial advantage for Sony. PlayStation 2 released in 2000, five years after the original PlayStation.
Due to the overwhelming success of the PS2, industry insiders position the launch window for Sony's next console in early 2005, with a US release later that year. If Nintendo were to pull even with PlayStation 3, GameCube's lifecycle would be a mere four years, one year short of the last generation. GameCube released in 2001, five years after its predecessor's debut in 1996.
