In the end, I look at Gamecube as Nintendo's filler console more than anything; I don't think they were expecting it to be successful, just something to be put in place so people wouldn't forget about them completely as a home console developer. There were talks about some amazing controller which had two parts to it and such before the launch. Sega was saying that Nintendo would be the big competition next generation if the rumours turned out to be true. It was intended to be what the Wii ended up being, but the technology to create a Wii type system at the time was too expensive.
I am not entirely sure why they decided to aim the system at children, but it didn't really work out for them very well. Xbox sold better, but I still see it as a complete failure; mostly because it was almost completely aimed at PC gamers. Unlike Nintendo, Microsoft didn't have a very hot selling handheld system to make up the billions of dollars in losses.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
