The Nintendo Gamecube is a very interesting part of Nintendo history. Because from a sales standpoint, it didn’t do well against its competitors like the PS2 and the original Xbox. The flip side is that it had some of the most memorable and impactful games of that generation. Including Super Smash Bros Melee, Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door, Luigi’s Mansion, Metroid Prime, Resident Evil 4 (before it got ported everywhere), and more.
Somewhat shockingly (and something that makes us feel REALLY old), the Nintendo Gamecube turned 20 the other day in the US. And because of that, some special interviews have been going on detailing certain key elements of the Gamecube’s launch. Not the least of which was the debate…over the color.
Yes, the “purple lunchbox” as we affectionately call it (I hope…) apparently was fought about by Nintendo and those promoting the console from the PR side of things. As part of an interview with VGC, former VP of marketing and corporate affairs Perrin Kaplan talked about how his group told Nintendo of Japan that purple may not have been the best way to go in regards to the base color of the console:
“We actually suggested that the purple was not the best to start with and [Japan] said, ‘no, we’re going to use that.’ Then we pushed for black and silver, because I think in the US nobody had ever really done the purple color before. It wasn’t that you couldn’t bring out hardware that was a different color, it was just a very… ‘female’ looking color. It just didn’t feel masculine, I think. I remember us being very nervous at E3 that we were going to get bad press purely based on the color.”
The reason for their thoughts about the color was that most consoles up to that point had been black or grey, not…purple. Beth Llewelyn, NOA’s former director of corporate communications expanded upon why this was so important back then:
“This pre-dates Apple. Picking your color these days is like making a statement. But back then all the game systems were black… even white hadn’t really been done widely. Nintendo was never a technology story, but we were always combating what our competitors at Sony and Microsoft were doing from a PR perspective and having this purple box didn’t quite help there.”
We doubt the color was a major reason for its average sales, but it does go and show just how much effort goes into every single aspect of a console pre-launch.
