With recently weakening 3rd party support Nintendo have decided to reduce the royalty rates that 3rd party developers have to pay to make games on the GameCube. The rates were not stated but NOA's senior vice president of Marketing, Peter Harrison spoke on the matter.

"The biggest games of the year last year were games like GTA and they came from an independent publisher," Harrison said. "We need to make sure that we have good relationships with all the independent publishers, because you never know where the next big hit game is going to come from."