What’s Matsushita’s Involvement with Nintendo and the GameCube?
On May 12, 1999, Mr. Morishita & Mr. Yamauchi announced the Matsushita/Nintendo alliance, as revealed by Howard Lincoln later that day at the pre-E3 Nintendo Press Conference. Lincoln then outlined Matsushita’s role with GameCube (then-“Project: Dolphin”), which still serves as a good description for what the alliance between the two companies is set to entail: “First, Matsushita will develop, manufacture and supply to Nintendo a DVD disk drive for incorporation into the [GameCube] hardware unit. The software medium for [GameCube] will be DVD and this DVD software will be manufactured by Matsushita and supplied to Nintendo.” This statement suggested the possibility that open-DVDs would be used, enabling DVD playback on the system. Nintendo later stated that this would not be the case and the DVD format has turned out to be a design proprietary to Nintendo. “Second, [GameCube]’s technology will be integrated into various Matsushita or Panasonic branded DVD consumer electronic products,
