The GameCube is one of Nintendo's home video game consoles and part of the sixth generation of video game consoles. Although the competing PlayStation 2 and Xbox consoles supported substantial amounts of online games, the GameCube had only eight games with internet or local area network (LAN) support. Nintendo never commissioned any servers or internet services to interface with the console, but allowed other publishers to do so and made them responsible for managing the online experiences for their games. Nintendo remained pensive with its online strategy for the duration of the GameCube's lifespan, defiant of growing interest from players and the success of Microsoft's Xbox Live online service. Company leaders including Shigeru Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata based their stance on concerns with maintaining quality control over their games and doubts that players would want to pay subscription fees. Playing GameCube games over a network requires the official broadband or modem adapter since the console does not have out of the box network capabilities. The only games released in western territories that can be played over the internet are three role-playing games (RPGs) in Sega's Phantasy Star series. Japan received an exclusive online RPG titled Homeland and a baseball game that can not be played online but had access to downloadable content. Nintendo published three racing games limited to LAN support: 1080° Avalanche, Kirby Air Ride, and Mario Kart: Double Dash!!. Hobbyists later developed PC software that can tunnel the GameCube's local network traffic over the internet, as well as private servers to continue hosting Phantasy Star games. History Before the GameCube, Nintendo had experimented with network connectivity with three accessories released exclusively in Japan for the Famicom, Super Famicom, and Nintendo 64. For the Famicom, they developed the Family Computer Network System peripheral in 1988. The device acted as a modem and allowed players to view weather forecasts, the stock market, and bet on horse races, among other activities. Following their experiences with the device, Nintendo developed the Satellaview for the Super Famicom, a satellite modem peripheral. The modem communicated to a series of BS satellites which relayed information from servers hosted by satellite radio company St.GIGA. Using this service, players had access to exclusive games, magazines, and other downloads. Nintendo ended its partnership with St.GIGA in 1999, and partnered with Recruit to build a new online service called Randnet for the 64DD, a magnetic disk drive add-on for