No, the Gamecube did not make more money than the PS2. Nintendo likely made the bulk of their money that generation off of GBA, considering they were able to sell 20 million copies of Mario remakes, and 30 million Pokemon games. But the bottom line was, while Sony had the most successful system of all time sales-wise, Nintendo was making more money. This is why Sony made PSP and ramped-up internal software development throughout the generation: they were imitating Nintendo. And its unlikely Gamecube lost money. They probably didn't pay for many third party exclusives (since they didn't have many...), or spend a ton on continued advertising, once it was clear they were not competing for first place. And the hardware was only sold at a very slim loss (according to reports at the time), and then only during the initial launch. Bottom line: If Nintendo approached Gamecube development how Sony approached PS2, it would have been a near-disaster. If Sony approached PS2 development how Nintendo approached Gamecube, they would have been far more profitable, and probably never had that off-year of big losses during launch.
"[Our former customers] are unable to find software which they WANT to play."
"The way to solve this problem lies in how to communicate what kind of games [they CAN play]."
Satoru Iwata, Nintendo President. Only slightly paraphrased.
