GameCube would've been more appreciated and sold around 40-45+ million units.
Nintendo did a lot of things that gen that they don't get much credit for because the 2nd place race turned into a shit show.
Resident Evil exclusivity was huge, imagine Nintendo today getting an exclusivity deal on basically the no.1 or no.2 biggest 3rd party franchise of the time.
Things like Animal Crossing would probably be a bit more appreciated because Nintendo would basically be the only other game in town and with a cheap system, a lot of people just would've picked one up as a secondary console at least.
The GameCube hardware was really well made as well, even today games like Rogue Squadron II/III, Star Fox Adventures, F-Zero GX, Resident Evil 4, Zelda: Wind Waker, etc. look great. GameCube was just much better hardware than the PS2 and much easier to program for on top of that, if it was the only game in town I think it would have been more appreciated by developers. XBox kinda sucked the air out of all the work Nintendo did to make a killer piece of hardware because basically a PC-in-a-box subsidized to lose like $100+ per box was an even better proposition to some devs.
In hindsight the best thing Microsoft could have done was to just cut a deal with Nintendo if they were so worried about Sony and kinda become like a defacto 2nd party supporter for them to stake them against the PS2. Make games like Halo and Project: Gotham Racing (precursor to Forza) but just console exclusive for GameCube and then port them to Windows PC later.
Would've saved them probably 20 years of losing money, lol. A GameCube that would have Halo and Super Smash Bros. Melee and Star Wars Rogue Squadron in its launch window (along with support titles like Wave Race: Blue Storm and Super Monkey Ball) would be a pretty fantastic launch window.
Last edited by Soundwave - on 29 October 2024
