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[NeoIkaruGAF]

It had a weak launch (Luigi’s Mansion was never more than a 7/10, the sequels all but made it a useless relic), the worst mainline Mario and the worst mainline Zelda (I won’t hear differently. I was there at launch. The disappointment was devastating).
The controller was comfortable to hold, and it had a good left stick. But the asymmetrical face buttons were weird and the D-pad, borderline unusable.
Mini DVDs were actually a good idea in my book. Nintendo was acutely aware of the loading times problem, not to mention piracy. Too bad devs craved more storage space and people wanted their consoles to be one-size-fits-all media players.

But yeah, the big problem was the library. Nintendo had lots of good exclusives. Problem was, nobody wanted to play them. PS2 already had the gen in its pocket before GC and Xbox even launched.

 

[AndrewRyan]

The general public view in 2003 was that Gamecube was primarily for kids. The PS2 had been sold out and that's what everyone wanted.

Never heard of the GameBoy Player before. That's interesting you could play your mobile games that way. Anyone try it?

 

[E-Cat]

switch is a home console.

So is the GBA if you hook it up to a TV.

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

If you don’t know what happened, it’s an easy google search. Or just ask

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

The general public view in 2003 was that Gamecube was primarily for kids. The PS2 had been sold out and that's what everyone wanted.

Never heard of the GameBoy Player before. That's interesting you could play your mobile games that way. Anyone try it?

Lol! PS2 wasn’t sold out. That wasn’t the issue. It launched in purple, it took too long for big games to come out, memory card storage was lackluster, there was no online capability, and the controller didn’t have enough buttons compared to PS/Xbox. Those were just some of the issues.

Also, PS2 being sold out would’ve increased GameCube sales, not hindered them. But the issue was a GameCube issue. It just wasn’t a very competitive option if you wanted to play sports games, shooters (which began booming during that gen), or anything with online play.

Yes Game Boy Player was awesome. You could use your GBA or GCN controller as the controller. But it was a bit cumbersome to use. And I don’t think it made much of a splash. If you lose the disc for it it’s completely useless, too. And finding one online they’re extremely expensive, so mine is a paperweight.

Technically, GameCube was a very well-made, performant console for the time. But the issue was you only bought one if you wanted to play Mario, Zelda, Smash, Metroid, or Pikmin. And that was something Nintendo wasn’t able to fix or address til Wii and then eventually Switch.

 

[Corian33]

I had a purple GC and loved it.

Years later (like 2008) I finally got a PS2 and a stack of used games for it that I had missed. God of War, MGS, Final Fantasy, etc. While it was fun to catch up on that side of the gaming world, I have no regrets about being a Nintendo kid through my teens.

I also played PC a lot so I got my shooter fix on there.

 

[Celine]

This happened:

GC's main issue was that the whole planning behind it was focused on identifying and proposing around what contributed to PS1 success instead on focusing on something that made it truly special for the masses.
Even before PS2 launched all the thid-party publishers in the World were already firmly sided with the Sony camp.
When Nintendo chose to doubled down on the "Nintendo-ness" WII outsold the PS3 and NDS crushed the PSP.

 

[Celine]

gta san andreas - october 26, 2004
halo 2 - november 9, 2004
half life 2 - november 16, 2004
metal gear solid 3 - november 17, 2004
world of warcraft - november 23, 2004

What a kickass season for videogames. It would be a shame to have a platform that didn’t have access to even a single one of those titles.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door - october 11, 2004
Metroid Prime 2 - november 15, 2004

And Resident Evil 4 was behind the corner:
Resident Evil 4 - january 11, 2005

Truly a period with quite a number of awesome game releases.

 

[Sub_Level]

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door - october 11, 2004
Metroid Prime 2 - november 15, 2004

And Resident Evil 4 was behind the corner:
Resident Evil 4 - january 11, 2005

Truly a period with some awesome game releases.

Oh shit I forgot Prime 2 was November. Damn 2004 really was one of the goats along with 1998, 2001, 2007, 2017, and 2023 (!).

 

[Moses85]

GameCube has...

Metroid Prime
Wind Waker/Twilight Princess
Resident Evil 4
ReMake
Etc.

All in their prime!

I also used my GC to play online with...

GOAT'd

I used PSO to backup my GCN Games

 

[Celine]

GameCube's failure is still the biggest mistery to me. Not because Nintendo lost against PS2 but because they failed against Microsoft at their debut.

It was a weak generation for Nintendo however Microsoft debut just slightly edged out the GC after inking $4 billion of losses.
The first Xbox is the definition of failure and would have forced any new entrant other than a huge corporation like Microsoft out of the console business after just one try.

One of the reasons why Nintendo is historically the most profitable console maker is how much they are ready to spend (lose money) to buy marketshare (in conjunction with creating unique products which sometime are met with very wide popularity).

 

[dezzy8]

What happened was Nintendo gave us a weird looking console, with a weird looking controller with mini discs and thought we were going to gobble it up.

 

[Celine]

What happened was Nintendo gave us a weird looking console, with a weird looking controller with mini discs and thought we were going to gobble it up.

What happened was Nintendo gave us a weird looking console, with a weird looking controller with DVD discs but no DVD playback and thought we were going to gobble it up.
And they were right. The console I'm talking about is the Wii (AKA two gamecubes duct-taped together).

 

[bender]

Pikmin, Twin Snakes, Eternal Darkness - all mediocre crap.

 

[Dane]

GameCube's failure is still the biggest mistery to me. Not because Nintendo lost against PS2 but because they failed against Microsoft at their debut.

Probably is not because one thing but because many aspects.

Lack of big third party support, especially on what was becoming the industry sales lead, M-rated games. Xbox was so strong in that department that even Rockstar amended their exclusivity contract with Sony to release GTA on the Xbox (GTA Double Pack), not to mention a lot of the PC hardware demanding FPS were also on the system and were strong sellers.

 

[Griffon]

I'm always surprised when I see those low sales. My entire friend group, we all had gamecubes, the 99$ price was a no-brainer and the games were awesome.

 

[Calverz]

I enjoyed my gamecube back in the day but the controller was just too weird for third party games I always felt.

 

[SmokedMeat]

What happened was Nintendo was pegged as the family friendly purple lunchbox kiddie system, that lacked a lot of the M rated hit games appearing elsewhere.

Excellent first party output though. It was my family’s travel system, for a few years there, and it was amazing.

 

[Trilobit]

But then PS2 had even more of the greatest games of all time, also backwards compatibility and DVD player, so that’s what happened.

I looooooveed my PS2 during that era. It was of course wonderful to be able play games like Wind Waker and Rogue Squadron on the Wii later on, but there wouldn't have been enough games for me on the GC to motivate a purchase at that time.

The DVD-player was also awesome at that time as it meant I could get my own film library in my room instead of having to share the living room with the family.

And the BC with PS1 games opened up many fun games I missed. If the GC would've been able to play N64 games it would have changed my calculations somewhat.

All in all despite being the weakest the PS2 was the allround winner. Got my Nintendo fix through GBA and DS Lite at that time.

 

[EruditeHobo]

The general public view in 2003 was that Gamecube was primarily for kids. The PS2 had been sold out and that's what everyone wanted.

Never heard of the GameBoy Player before. That's interesting you could play your mobile games that way. Anyone try it?

I had it because I was obsessed with Final Fantasy Tactics and the sequel was GBA exclusive.

I bought it for one game, and the game was hugely disappointing. I never played it again after 2 sessions or so.

 

[NikuNashi]

Why do people keep saying purple. I bought it launch day in black. It was a thing if beauty.

 

[SomeGit]

Why do people keep saying purple. I bought it launch day in black. It was a thing if beauty.

Because marketing was all in on the purple SKU, yes you could buy black and other colors, but people's impressions were made from the purple model.

 

[VAVA Mk2]

I enjoyed my GameCube. It has shortcomings, but it had some amazing games (Metroid Prime 1/2, Wind Waker, Mario Sunshine, Viewtiful Joe) that made a purchase worth it to me.

 

[The Stig]

3rd party support was a vast improvement over the previous console

yet still shit. deny it.

 

[The Stig]

i had all 3 consoles at the time. the GC got played the least.

 

[stickkidsam]

Weird seeing people dunk on the GameCube’s design.

I fuckin’ loved that little lunchbox.

 

[Davevil]

Proprietary format and childish look, impossible not to fail

 

[Mr Reasonable]

Nintendos decission against a DVD Player and the fucking mini DVDs was

Classic Nintendo penny pinching - as soon as it was mentioned that they'd have to pay a license to do DVD playback, it was not happening.

However, I think at the time what really did it for them was that games were being marketed to adults, with "grown up" themes, and Nintendo seemed to be for children.

Personally, I got a good amount of play out of my GameCube, didn't really care about the DVD drive, did care about the games.

 

[Deputy Moonman]

For me it was the problem of not being able to live up to its predecessor. The games on the N64 were too good. I purchased a Gamecube at launch along with wave race and some other games that just didn't do anything for me. I was disappointed in Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker, Mark Kart Double Dash, Star Fox Adventures, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and Luigi's Mansion. Pikmin and the Resident Evil remake were the lone bright spots. I probably spent most of my time on the Gamecube, however, playing SSX Tricky and Super Monkey Ball. I started Animal Crossing too late, but enjoyed it for a time. Once I had a chance to play Halo at a friend's LAN party I never looked back.

EDIT: Oof! Completely forgot about Metroid Prime. That game was phenomenal and one of if not the best game on the Cube. I also forgot about Skies of Arcadia, which was just okay for me.

 

[Disco Dave]

Some excellent points are raised in this thread from 2013;

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/the-struggles-of-marketing-gamecube-notenoughshaders.653527/

Its hard to believe this little lunchbox reached sub £99 and still languished in 3rd place.

 

[Seider]

Gamecube had only 24 Mb of RAm. Ps2 had 32 and Xbox 64. Also, a lot of less space in the optical disc than DVDs on Ps2 and Xbox.

Third party games were developed for PS2 and then these games had to be ported to Gamecube and Xbox. The lack of Ram and storage in Gamecube led us to a situation where most games couldnt fit on the Gamecube Hardware. It was powerful enough in render specs but it failed in RAM and Disc storage capacity.

 

[6502]

yet still shit. deny it.

Your feelings have been hurt by a plastic purple box. Deny it.

 

[Moses85]

Classic Nintendo penny pinching - as soon as it was mentioned that they'd have to pay a license to do DVD playback, it was not happening.

However, I think at the time what really did it for them was that games were being marketed to adults, with "grown up" themes, and Nintendo seemed to be for children.

Personally, I got a good amount of play out of my GameCube, didn't really care about the DVD drive, did care about the games.

Me too. Have more GCN Games than PS2 Games.

 

[Xdrive05]

I still think its design language/philosophy was amazing. I would call it “punch well above its weight minimalism”.

- Tiny form factor yet impressive hardware capabilities all for a lower price. This was just pure win!
- Tiny disks for fast loading (kind of an extension of the N64 cartridge vs CD-ROM trade offs of the previous gen, just not as stark of a difference). There was a cool factor here, but they should have used higher density tech to provide comparable capacity. Same thing that hurt them in the previous gen with 3rd parties.
- Simplified controller layout with a prominent main button, yet still has unique features as well. Problem was it was just different enough from “standard” designs to make it hard to port controls well on multiplats.
- The physical handle as an acknowledgment of the ever growing “let’s play at your house” scene / LAN part scene, which ironically would be best realized that gen by the entirely opposite design language console of the OG Xbox and Halo LAN parties. This was probably the most wasted potential of the GC. An alternative history where Rare was still Rare and made a real Perfect Dark sequel for GC that used system link LAN would have made this whole approach work very well! Or if Melee had 8 player system link LAN perhaps.

So there was a lot of great potential design there, but they just didn’t stick the landing on most of it.

 

[Tal Shiar Agent]

I adore the GameCube, maybe more than the PS2.

I've got an HDMI dongle, Picoboot modchip, and an SD card reader installed. Playing Game Boy games using the Game Boy Player with the homebrew Game Boy Interface software (rather than the crappy official disc) is fantastic.

 

[Drew1440]

It did have reasonable third-party support (from EA and Activision at least) but when it came to mature titles its library lacked that (Obscure/GTA/Manhunt). Also the controller was very limited as it didn't feature the analog face buttons that the PS2/Xbox had, it only had one shoulder (Z) button instead of two, and the analog sticks were not clickable, making it difficult to port games that made full use of the controller.
Towards the end of the generation, the 1.8GB was fast becoming a bottleneck when some games were making use of Dual-Layer DVD's.

they lost that gen (sales-wise) literally because it didn't support dvds

gamecube graphics were head and shoulders above ps2 graphics, and most of its games hold up beautifully today

Don't think DVD player support would have made a difference, it didn't do the original Xbox any favor except sell a million more, but still paled compared to the PS2. Plus Nintendo would have had to put in an MPEG2 decoder for it to play DVD's, The PS2 had its IPU embedded in its EMotion Engine, and the Xbox's Pentium 3 was fast enough to decode it in software.

Gamecube had only 24 Mb of RAm. Ps2 had 32 and Xbox 64. Also, a lot of less space in the optical disc than DVDs on Ps2 and Xbox.

Third party games were developed for PS2 and then these games had to be ported to Gamecube and Xbox. The lack of Ram and storage in Gamecube led us to a situation where most games couldnt fit on the Gamecube Hardware. It was powerful enough in render specs but it failed in RAM and Disc storage capacity.

Gamecube's memory setup was peculiar, it's true it has 24MB of system RAM and 16MB of A-RAM, which could be used to store off-screen textures that can be loaded into the eDRAM for rendering, though it's too slow to be used for anything else. It's very odd and I think Nintendo would have been better off having 32MB of RAM with the eDRAM instead.

 

[Tal Shiar Agent]

So is the GBA if you hook it up to a TV.

You can mod your GBA to have Switching functionality.

https://aliexpress.us/item/3256804806679617.html

 

[Thaedolus]

No Mario at launch, and Sunshine kind of felt like a dud after 64

Celda…I was there when the first trailer dropped and there was a huge backlash

PS2 hype was off the charts

The controller, while comfy, needed a true right analog stick and four shoulder buttons. The front layout wasn’t great for a lot of games either. I got the Mega Man collection on GameCube but always wished I had it on PS2 because it plays terribly on the GC controller.

But despite all that it was my favorite console of that gen. My first PS2 died and I had to get a slim, but my original GC is still trucking along.

 

[The Stig]

Your feelings have been hurt by a plastic purple box. Deny it.

ok sorry. it was still lacking compared to it's peers.

 

[kirby007]

ill have you know mine still works melee and kart still see regular play

 

[6502]

ok sorry. it was still lacking compared to it's peers.

It was far behind ps2 in library volume and xbox often had the best versions, I still managed to get 50 plus good games. A far better situation than N64 and where PS2 wasn't the target machine, the GC versions were usually better RE4 the most obvious I can remember.
It was cheap enough early on for people to afford one of the other systems too so I don't think many would have regretted getting one.

 

[kuncol02]

Gamecube had only 24 Mb of RAm. Ps2 had 32 and Xbox 64. Also, a lot of less space in the optical disc than DVDs on Ps2 and Xbox.

Third party games were developed for PS2 and then these games had to be ported to Gamecube and Xbox. The lack of Ram and storage in Gamecube led us to a situation where most games couldnt fit on the Gamecube Hardware. It was powerful enough in render specs but it failed in RAM and Disc storage capacity.

Also controller was absolute garbage (stupid layout, less buttons, unusable dpad and right stick, if it even can be called that).

 

[Unknown?]

switch is a home console.

Where's the /s?

 

[LavitzSlambert]

This happened:

GC's main issue was that the whole planning behind it was focused on identifying and proposing around what contributed to PS1 success instead on focusing on something that made it truly special for the masses.
Even before PS2 launched all the thid-party publishers in the World were already firmly sided with the Sony camp.
When Nintendo chose to doubled down on the "Nintendo-ness" WII outsold the PS3 and NDS crushed the PSP.

The Wii and Wii-U were what happens when you focus on the short term and chase the casual audience. Ridiculous sales numbers while the fad is in vogue, and enormous dropoff when the majority of those customers stopped playing after a few years. Grandma was never going to buy a Wii-U, the Nintendo faithful were alienated by the Wii gimmick and the software void that was 2009 onward. Everyone says advertising was the problem with the Wii-U, but that's not true - it's the market Nintendo went after with the Wii that was the true problem. They displaced their core customer base with a larger audience that were never going to buy an additional console when the Wii they own still worked, was only a few years old, and they exhausted the waggle gimmick.

 

[IbizaPocholo]

The GameCube still seems to have some tricks up its sleeve.

 

[Katajx]

Came at an odd time for me at a time where I didn’t have more than one console in the same generation. Grew up Sega/Nintendo, but Sony seemed like the more mature thing that grew up with me.

Nintendo was being Nintendo and some of the new things they tried then didn’t work for me, but I appreciated them as I got a little older. I don’t think it helped personally that there was a split in interest with some of the stuff coming out on GBA.

I bought it finally for Twilight Princess, and then played that stuff on the Wii instead.

 

[sinnergy]

No need for a video the minuscule discs , instead of dvds which hold about 3 times of much data , that combined with royalties on disc prints .