Nintendo on Thursday said it has trimmed the royalty rates it charges outside game developers, in an effort beef up the roster of hit titles available on its flagging GameCube console.
Japan"s Nintendo, third behind Sony PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Xbox game console, said that in March it adjusted its royalty rate structure for all licensees to make it competitive with its rivals.
"Before our royalty rate was a little more aggressive so to the third party publisher it was a little less attractive to make games for GameCube," George Harrison, senior vice president of marketing for Nintendo of America, told Reuters.
Software is a catalyst for the gaming industry, with hit titles spurring sales of boxes on which they are exclusively available. In turn, consumers then seek to buy more games for the particular machine they own.
What is more, games developed by console makers are a profit engine, while major third-party publishers typically pay a royalty to the console maker and keep the lion"s share of profits for themselves.
Nintendo earlier this week blamed a slump in profits on GameCube, whose sales fell short of its target of 10 million by 44 percent for 2002.
The company admitted that new titles in its long-running "Mario" and "Metroid" series were overshadowed by blockbuster demand for "Grand Theft Auto" (GTA) games, developed for the PlayStation 2 by publisher Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.