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Soundwave on 30 November 2022
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Wyrdness said:
Soundwave said:

Animal Crossing was effectively a new IP for the GameCube as the N64 game was never released in the West and even the Japanese game came out late in the N64's life cycle. So yeah, GameCube got a little benefit there, but it wasn't exactly a system seller at that time (2002). The GameCube was also almost a year old by the time it came out so it didn't even really help it in that crucial launch window period. 

Majora's Mask ... now that could have possibly impacted the GCN's fortunes early quite a bit, that's one of the greatest games ever made arguably and Perfect Dark would have been the best FPS (or one of them). 

N64 is just an anomaly in that I think it's a system that was legitimately popular (early N64 sales destroyed the Playstation's sales rate and N64 was THE hottest gift to get for 1996 other than the Tickle Me Elmo mega-craze), but it was crippled by one stupid design decision on Nintendo's part (to not accommodate CDs, especially when you could still have had a cartridge slot too). The fact that the N64 still sold the same as the SNES in North America and Europe despite having little 3rd party support and like a library only 1/4 the size of the SNES is pretty telling. If they had the 3rd party support they should have had (Final Fantasy exclusive, things like MGS, Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid at worst multiplat) ... it would probably be the greatest Nintendo system. 

The library it should have had would have been unbelievable.

AC was still a game from a prior platform which was your whole point but as shown this is nothing new AC also changed the way we looked at games, 2002 is also the launch year for PAL regions and ROW, GCN had WW, Melee and Prime in its first year it made little difference as the issues for the platform were much more fundamental.

There's a big difference between getting a Zelda or Mario Kart from a previous platform and some IP no one's ever heard of and has no established fan base.

The first 6 months of a Nintendo system especially seem critical for the system's long term success, the GameCube was already on thin ice because at the time people expected a AAA brand new Mario game to launch with every Nintendo system. 

GCN had a bad drought from about Jan-May 2002, it never really recovered from that. 

The other mistake Nintendo made was simply launching that late to begin with, giving Sony an 18 month head start when they're already the established market leader from the previous generation was just game over. 

They should have launched in fall 2000 which was the original plan anyway and moved Zelda: Majora's Mask (didn't run on the N64 without the Expansion Pak), Perfect Dark (which barely ran on the N64 anyway), and perhaps Paper Mario as your 2000 launch.

Probably still wouldn't have beaten the PS2, but I think a full year head start over the XBox would've effectively iced the XBox out of the market and given Nintendo a more solid 40 million-ish range userbase for the GameCube as it would've been the defacto alternative to the PS2.