When the GameCube was in development, Nintendo was so confident in it that they expected the system to be getting PS2 levels of third party support. That included exclusives. This was because the GameCube was superior to the PS2 in almost every aspect. The only thing it couldn't do was play DVD's. At the time, Nintendo didn't think that was such a big deal. They had made deals with Capcom to have the Resident Evil series be exclusive to GameCube and to create several other exclusive games. Sega had gone third party and signed up to develop for GameCube. Many third parties who didn't support the N64 decided to support the GameCube. Aside from third party support, Nintendo had partnerships with several western studios to provide exclusive games. This included Rare, Silicon Knights, Left Field Productions, Factor 5 and Retro Studios. On paper, the GameCube sounded like it was going to be the best Nintendo console ever.
When the GameCube launched, the Nintendo exclusives that came out that holiday weren't the most mind-blowing games, but they were high in quality. The third party support was there too. Then after that, everything started to fall apart. People thought it was a kids' system and opted for the more adult Xbox and PS2. Those falling sales made third parties nervous and third party support started dropping and had mostly collapsed by mid 2003. The games Capcom had promised were delayed. One of them was cancelled. Nintendo's second party coalition collapsed. Left Field Productions bought back Nintendo's share of the company and went third party. Rare was bought out by Microsoft. Silicon Knights couldn't deliver much after Eternal Darkness. While Retro Studios was bought out by Nintendo and delivered the Metroid Prime games, the four or five other games that were in development were cancelled.
The reason I bring all this up is because I think it had a direct impact on Nintendo's own games. They expected the third party support to be there. They expected the second party exclusives to be there. When they weren't there, that's when Nintendo's own games were getting rushed out the door. They weren't terrible, but they definitely weren't what they could have been. This same situation would later occur with the Wii U except with the Wii U, Nintendo took the risky step of not releasing games until they were truly done.
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