It looked like things we not going to well for the GameCube in Japan. Well good news has surfaced recently... the GameCube is taking of the land of the rising sun after all!!

Nintendo Co.'s video-game console sales more than tripled in the week after the world's second-largest game maker cut the price of its GameCube console in Japan by a fifth, a researcher said. GameCube sales rose to more than 18,700 units in the week beginning June 3, when the Kyoto-based company cut the price to 19,800 yen ($157.50), from about 5,400 sold the previous week, according to Media Create Co., an industry research company. Cutting prices has also helped Nintendo's rivals Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp. increase sales of their consoles, PlayStation 2 and Xbox. While reducing prices may boost sales temporarily, releasing popular game software is needed to sustain the increase, investors said.

"Cutting prices is becoming a less effective way to boost game console sales in the long term,'' said Yoshiya Morimoto, who helps manage 800 billion yen in Japanese equities at Japan Investment Trust Management Co. and declined to say whether he holds Nintendo shares. "It's important how many hit game software titles game console makers have."

After releasing the game machine first in Japan in September, Nintendo has sold 3.8 million GameCubes in Japan and the U.S. as of the end of March, falling short of the company's projection of 4 million because of the limited number of game software titles available for the console. The company makes eight games for the console and 18 are made by other companies for the GameCube. In comparison, 28 games are available for Microsoft's Xbox and more than 500 titles are sold for Sony's best-selling PlayStation 2. Nintendo plans to make 14 million GameCubes and sell 12 million worldwide in the year ending March 2003.

Sony's PlayStation 2 console sales surged as much as eightfold at some retailers in the U.S. after the world's largest maker of game consoles cut the price by a third in May. The next day Microsoft reduced the price of its Xbox console both in Japan and the U.S. Still, the gains may be short-lived. PlayStation 2 sales in Japan fell 17 percent in the week of June 3 to about 49,800 from a week earlier, while sales of Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox console declined more than 30 percent to almost 3,900, Media Create said. Nintendo shares rose 300 yen, or 1.8 percent, to 16,600 yen, compared with a 1.6 percent decline in the benchmark Nikkei 225 index.