Gamecube will not square off against X-box

Nintendo said on Tuesday that it won't make more Gamecube consoles available for its US launch on 18 November.

US retailers had hoped to stock Gamecube instead of Microsoft's X-box, launched a few days earlier, after fears that only around half the promised numbers of Microsoft's console would be available.

Nintendo of Japan said that production capacity limits meant it was too late to make more machines and that it wouldn't redirect stock away from the Japanese market, where the console launched earlier this month, as demand was already outstripping supply.

The games giant plans to ship at least 700,000 units on day one in the US and a total of 1.1 million units by the end of this year. In Japan, it launched with 450,000 consoles and plans to add 50,000 this month, 100,000 in October, 200,000 in November and 500,000 in December.

Microsoft hasn't commented on analyst predictions that it will only have around 300,000 consoles for the first day of its US X-box launch and 100,000 a week thereafter.

Both consoles launch in Europe in the Spring of next year. They are trying to catch up with Sony's PlayStation 2, which has gone on to sell over 15 million units worldwide since last year's launch, itself dogged by supply shortages.