Game Boy Advance arrives in store

By John Gaudiosi -- Video Business, 6/11/2001

JUNE 11 | The first 500,000 Game Boy Advance handheld units from Nintendo along with 17 launch titles became available Monday at 6,000 retail locations in the U.S.

The 32-bit successor to the 8-bit Game Boy Color, GBA retails for $99.95 and is available in three colors (white, blue and violet) with a fourth, fuchsia, available June 25. Nintendo expects to have a library of more than 60 GBA titles at retail by Christmas, and the new handheld is backward-compatible with the thousands of Game Boy Color and Game Boy software titles.

"Game Boy Advance sets a new standard in portable entertainment," said Peter Main, executive VP sales and marketing for Nintendo of America Inc. "In fact, we expect it to expand on our dominance in this category with sales of up to 1 million units in the first three weeks."

GBA launched March 21 in Japan and has sold 1.6 million units in its first five weeks there. Nintendo projects shipments of 8 million GBA systems and 15 million GBA games in the U.S. this year. By March 31, 2002, Nintendo estimates that worldwide GBA sales will reach 23 million units.

Nintendo will back GBA with $30 million in marketing at launch and an additional $45 million through the end of the year with its extensive "Life Advanced" marketing plan, which includes TV, print and radio ads as well as cross-country tours and events.

Except for Nintendo first-party games such as F-Zero: Maximum Velocity and Super Mario Advance, which sell for $29.95, GBA third-party software retails for $39.95. That sets a new high price point for portable gaming and could open up a rental opportunity for portable gaming.

The third-party launch games include Army Men Advance (3DO), Pinobee: Wings of Adventure (Activision), Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (Activision), Super Dodge Ball Advance (Atlus), Fire Pro Wrestling (BAM!), Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (Konami), Konami Krazy Racers (Konami), Earthworm Jim (Majesco), Iridion 3-D (Majesco), Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure (Majesco), Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2 (Midway), Namco Museum (Namco), ChuChu Rocket! (Sega), GT Advance Championship Racing (THQ) and Rayman Advance (Ubi Soft).

In addition to the games, a full line of first- and third-party peripherals from Nintendo, including AC adapters, power packs, car adapters, link cables and assorted lights and carrying cases, are available ranging in price from $6.99 to $24.99.

Of course, GBA will become a peripheral itself in November when the handheld can be used as a discrete controller for Nintendo's next-generation GameCube console.

Retailers such as Best Buy, Toys R Us and Wal-Mart have been advertising Game Boy Advance in print ads for the past few weeks. Best Buy is offering GBA for $89.99, with a one unit per customer maximum this week.

Online retailers such as Gamestop.com, ToysRUs.com/Amazon.com and EBGames.com are bundling GBA systems with games and peripherals as they do with Sony's PlayStation 2.

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