Why did the Gamecube fail?

[Jumpin]

curl-6 said:

You kinda had to be there.

It's easy to look back on it now through the lens of nostalgia and wonder why it didn't succeed, but at the time, coming on the heels of the N64 and alongside the Xbox and PS2, Gamecube was basically the definition of "uncool" in everything from the way it looked to the approach many of its core franchises took.

It was a colossal failure to read the room and provide what was seen as appealing and desirable in gaming at the time.

SKMBlake said:
Because of PS2. It caused the failure of the Dreamcast, the Gamecube and didn't help the success of the original Xbox. Why bother buying another console when everybody on Earth (almost) was buying a PS2 ?

VAMatt said:
I think the reality is that PS2 was the top dog, and XB was seen as the alternative. There wasn't enough room in the market for GC. The Gamecube looked like a toy, was named like a toy, and was generally not taken seriously.

d21lewis said:
Without reading the other posts:

-It didn't have the "cool factor". It just looked like a kid's toy. If you wanted power, you got an Xbox. If you wanted online gaming, you got a PS2 or Xbox. If you wanted an incredible library, you got a PS2. The GameCube was just in a weird place.
-It had the worst version of multiplats, by far. Some games I bought for the 'Cube and had to return for the PS2 version. They were just missing too much content.
-It always got new multiplat games later than be PS2 and Xbox.
-The PS2 pretty much had the generation won before the GameCube even hit the market. Based on a magazine I had at the time (PSM), the PS lead was insurmountable and people polled only considered getting an Xbox or GameCube as a secondary system--and not many were even going to do that.
-

couchmonkey said:

1. Microsoft took the FPS market which was one of N64’s greatest strengths. The Rare buyout never paid off that well, but it did deprive Nintendo of Perfect Dark.

2. Nintendo doubled down on the “kiddie” image that was plaguing it ever since Mortal Kombat with the purple lunchbox design,  Wind Walker art style, and that awful Mario Sunshine ad. I used to think these weren’t such a big deal, but I think otherwise now.

3. No 2D Mario? This is Sean Malstrom’s complaint, but if you look at the sales of New SMB and New SMB Wii, maybe legit.

4. Bad third party support: I think there are lots of reasons for this, N64’s poor performance took all the energy out of GameCube from a business perspective, there are rumours MS moneyhatted some games into PS2/Xbox exclusivity, and you’ve got the button layout and disc size complaints mentioned before. I will add that it was way better than the third party support on N64, just not very good.

Salnax said:
Not having games like GTA3 hurt, but Nintendo hardly ever gets the same level of multiplatform support as their competition. Nintendo themselves should be seen as the main variable that went wrong.

The GameCube was basically the N64-2 as far as Nintendo's software support went. Most of the best-selling GameCube games (Super Mario Sunshine, Double Dash, Wind Waker, Melee, Mario Party, etc) were basically less-revolutionary successors of N64 titles. And the N64 wasn't that popular to begin with, so getting a few more multiplatform games was not that big of a deal, especially with Rare out of the equation after 2002 (4 of the top 10 sellers on N64 were Rare games).

It also didn't help that Nintendo seemed to give up on the GameCube halfway into its life. Look at the N64; it didn't do amazingly, but many of it's biggest games were released in its fourth year or later (Super Smash Bros, DK64, Majora's Mask, Mario Party, all the Pokemon games, etc). How many big GameCube games were released from 2004 onwards? You had Pokemon Colosseum, more Mario Party, and Mario Strikers basically.

I just wanted to call out these posts, because I agree with each of them.

I'll add that in the gaming community there is a massive hipster faction (I know this group because I'm a bit of a retro-gaming hipster myself) that likes things that were failures because they were failures. There is a lot of ignoring of reality and instead focusing on a mythological version of gaming history that didn't really happen. Gamecube, for lack of a better phrase: didn't feel important or special.