At this morning's teleconference, Nintendo has confirmed the GameCube price cut to $99, beginning tomorrow.
At this morning's conference call, Nintendo of America's George Harrison (Senior Vice President of Marketing) announced that starting tomorrow, the GameCube would be "dressed to the Nines", with a suggested retail price of $99.99.
Harrison also mentioned the new GameCube titles coming for the holiday season, including Mario Kart: Double Dash, 1080 Avalanche, Mario Party 5, and more. There will be over 100 new titles by the end of the year, with the GameCube's entire library reaching 320 by year end.
Harrison stressed that Nintendo isn't just capable of selling first-party titles, touting the success of Soul Calibur 2 on GameCube, which is outselling the Xbox and PS2 versions by a ratio of 3 to 2.
In terms of marketing, Nintendo plans on spending $100 Million for the holidays, with five million of that dedicated to advertising the new price. Nintendo will also take to the malls, with a 12-market tour from October to December.
No Nintendo announcement would be complete without mentioning that Game Boy Advance is the hottest game system in the world, and the recently released Final Fantasy Tactics Advance has sold 150,000 copies in just two weeks. No price cut on the Game Boy Advance SP was announced or planned, and Nintendo doesn't see a problem with the console and handheld priced the same, going as far as to mention that for the same price as a PS2 bundle, you can get both a GameCube and a Game Boy Advance SP.
When asked about any special holiday bundles, and specifically about a possible "LAN Bundle", Harrison quickly dismissed the possiblility, saying that they don't see the LAN feature as being the main selling point of those games. As such, Nintendo will not be promoting that feature exclusively. As such, they are not increasing shipments of the Broadband adapter, though retailers should be able to order more to meet demand.
