Nintendo's Gamecube delivers margins Microsoft only dreams of

DESPITE SEEING ITS GAMED CUBE console slip behind Microsoft's X-Box in various territories, Nintendo remains in a healthy state in the war of the console makers because of the relatively big margins it makes on its console, compared to Microsoft's loss-making hardware.

Unconfirmed sources close to Nintendo have told the INQUIRER that it costs Nintendo just $20 to make each Gamecube, while Microsoft is known to make a loss on each X-Box it sells.

A spokesman for Nintendo refused to confirm the figures, while insisting the company remained "on target" with its console.

Sony's Playstation2 remains king of the consoles despite increasingly aggressive tactics from Microsoft to support its X-Box. In the UK, unattributed retail statistics from the website computerandvideogames.com show some 66,500 PS2s were bought by punters in the last week alone. Microsoft sold some 15,060 X-Boxes, while Nintendo managed to shift just 8,000 Gamecubes.

Nintendo, however, sold over one million Game boy Advances in the US in the past two weeks, boosted by the arrival of the new game: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

Sales of the Playstation2 have been driven by the popularity of the latest incarnation of the car chasing, shoot and whore -‘em up Grand Theft Auto, Vice City. µ

* SOURCES CLAIMED that retailers of the Xbox were massively discounting units in the fevered dash for Christmas sales here in the UK.