October 19^th, 2001 (12:00am) - Nintendo’s vice president of corporate affairs Perrin Kaplan told Bloomberg news today that it is locked and ready to go for GameCube launch November 18 in the US. The executive said that Nintendo has already warehoused half of the 700,000 GCN hardware units needed to launch the system in less than a month and the other half should arrive within the next several days.
"We’re ready to roll," Kaplan told the Bloomberg Forum. "We’re completely confident."

Nintendo is quickly putting the finishing touches on the US version of Luigi’s Mansion, but other titles such as Wave Race: Blue Storm have already been finalized.

The company, which will deliver an equal amount of "indigo" (purple) and "jet black" consoles at launch, said it is not worried about slow sales due to a nation terrorized by an ongoing war. As such, it has not organized an official pre-sale program to encourage shoppers to buy GameCube. "People are finding it to be a really great entertainment choice at home that’s completely affordable," Kaplan said. "Sales have remained very strong for Nintendo. We have not seen any kind of dip at all."