Nintendo hopes new games console will help it avoid fate of rival Sega

Nintendo launched its GameCube games console in Japan yesterday, quietly aiming to capture a substantial slice of a market that has shrunk to three giants – and where it is in danger of falling to third.

The Japanese welcomed it with the enthusiasm they have for any new technology, with legions of males aged from 15 to 40 lining up from before dawn to get one of the 500,000 consoles going on sale.

Among those waiting to pay 25,000 yen (£140) for the machine was Anthon Thomas, a 19-year-old British student, who said: "Nintendo, they make games, they don't make just game machines; so whenever they make something, you know it is going to be quality."

The GameCube, which goes on sale in Britain next spring, has had a mixed reaction from stores in Japan.

"I wouldn't say the sales have been explosive, but the GameCubes have been selling well, but maybe not as well as PlayStation 2 [when it debuted]," said a spokesman for Culture Convenience Club, a Japanese retailer.

The other two giants in the console market are Sony, which launched PlayStation 2nearly 18 months ago in Japan but only in the past year in Europe, and Microsoft, whose Xbox launch has been repeatedly delayed and will not now arrive in the US until next year.

All three manufacturers let publishers write most of the games for their platforms and take a royalty; the consoles are typically sold at a loss.

Sega, which was once Nintendo's main rival, announced this year that it would stop making consoles after four years of heavy losses. Instead, it will write software for its former rivals' consoles. However, Nintendo's strategy is to aim for a simple, low-cost console in the hope of selling more.

While PlayStation 2 and the Xbox will cost more than £200 and offer features such as DVD playback and high-speed network connections, the GameCube will just play games. All three machines run on 128-bit processors – up to four times as powerful as standard PCs. However, that power is necessary to produce convincing graphics onscreen.

David Gosen, European sales and marketing director for Nintendo, said the games focus meant there had been "huge" expectation for the new product. "Although what goes in to the box is important, it's what comes out of it that counts the most, and what comes out of GameCube is unparalleled."

The company hopes to sell 4 million by next March, 1.4 million of them in Japan this year.