In 1999, began
In 1999, began to assume that Nintendo would release its new console. Everything suggested that the company would continue using the cartridge as a storage medium for their games and would be backward compatible with the Nintendo 64. Nintendo unveiled its console before the press with the codename “Project Dolphin”, but later the project was renamed the Star Cube, whose intention of the project was to regain the lead lost to Sony with the PlayStation.
Nintendo wanted to regain leadership in the video game market, which lost to the Nintendo 64 and was dominated by rival Sony with its PlayStation console. Nintendo sought support from IBM, which he commissioned the manufacture of the central processor of the console, which is based on the PowerPC architecture.
Nintendo seek the support of the development company ArtX graphic device, after which time it was acquired by ATI for this reason the ATI logo appears in the system, which was responsible for developing the GPU. This graphics processor exceeded that of the PlayStation 2, Dreamcast, could finally compete with the graphic of the Xbox without any inconvenience.
In the Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo puts aside the cartridge holder as a means of distribution of their games, it is believed that the cartridge was the cause of that lag behind Nintendo 64 PlayStation competitor. Nintendo opts for creating optical drives for this purpose format GOD (acronym for “GameCube Optical Disc). Using DVD technology in a reader Matsushita (Panasonic in the U.S. and Europe), is in the form of optical disc with storage capacity of 1.5 GB of information. Also, the reading unit of the console is able to access the disk at a rate higher than a conventional DVD.
At first, the console would be released worldwide in 2000, but Nintendo had in mind before enabling your console to connect to the Internet and made a change in plans. The technical details were already on the table, but the real possibilities of the new generation console from Nintendo were still unknown. On 24 August 2000 at 15:30 (national time in Japan), on the day prior to the Nintendo Space World 2000, the “Big N” presents the design and Peripherals Nintendo GameCube (finally scrap the name Star Cube) , and demonstrations in which they could appreciate a huge leap from what its predecessor, the N64, was able to offer. Therefore, this new machine promised far exceed the previous generation of consoles. However, despite the well was not as successful as expected and came third in sales among his generation consoles, with only 21.5 million units sold worldwide.