Why did the Gamecube fail?

[Leynos]

Wman1996 said:

RolStoppable said:

The main reasons are a combination of weak first party output and the console being built on the false premise that third party multiplatform games are important. After the Nintendo 64 had failed, Nintendo's main takeaway from it was that it is about third party software, so the GC was designed accordingly. It wasn't until a generation later that Nintendo recognized that it is about Nintendo themselves and what they stand for, so the Wii was designed accordingly. Then they learned nothing from the Wii and made it about third party multiplatform games again with the Wii U, a console that failed even harder than the GC. Then we got Switch which has the distinct Nintendo identity again. There's a clear pattern of success and failure, including the NES and SNES which weren't about third party multiplatform games either.

I would strongly disagree with that. The only thing that was conducive to third-party support on the GameCube were the specs. The GCN was the second-most capable console of the sixth generation. And the N64 had been the most capable of the fifth. This was the last generation Nintendo was competitive in specs for home consoles.

The processing power, RAM, etc. were good for third-party developers. But Nintendo threw tons of hurdles in their way. Namely, Mini DVDs that crippled the size of games. Though admittedly, it was not as bad as using cartridges for the N64. Someone else said on this thread that the average PS2 game was about 3 GB. That's 2 GameCube discs. And most developers didn't want to deal with 2 discs, or they had to compress the game to fit it on one or two discs.

The GameCube controller was also not conducive to third-party games. There was only one bumper, no dedicated select button, an oversized A button/undersized X, B, Y buttons, and an undersized second analog stick.

And online on GameCube was virtually non-existent. That was a big slap in the face to third-party developers, especially as online console gaming was really picking up around 2002-2005.

Nintendo learned very few lessons from the N64 to GCN on designing their consoles for third-parties to take advantage of.

N64 was powerful but difficult to work on aside from cart space. I don't have the time to dig up old magazines but I do know Miyamoto apologized publicly for N64's difficulty to work on and Gamecube was made to make it easier on 3rd parties. Thing is, Nintendo is still Nintendo in being clueless at times. So they had small discs. An odd controller and while Dreamcast,Xbox opted for Direct X. PS2 with OpenGL. Nintendo made their own API. GX, which they used all the way up to Wii U. Switch is the first console I know of from Nintendo that uses a standard API.