To echo the thoughts of Shigeru Miyamoto from some ancient interview with Famitsu that stuck with me - Nintendo failed with the Gamecube on a creative level, and that translated to commercial failure. He expanded by saying that instead of setting the trends, they were following the trends of others. Also according to Miyamoto, this bad creative direction included their software strategies at the time.
In other words: GBA was still very much a Nintendo system while Gamecube was more a reflection of what Sony was doing with Playstation. The kiddy image was because GBA was the standard - it had accusations of being kiddy as well, but no one cared. But the Gamecube was the imitation - so the contrast was made sharper, and the PlayStation fans it was targeting weren’t impressed. And, to be fair, the Gamecube was quite a kiddy looking piece of hardware: the purple colour, a controller that looked like a toy while the box itself resembled a child’s lunchbox. On top of that, the software they were using to push it were games like Celda and Sunshine, neither of which were the direction people wanted either series to go - especially after showing a more Twilight Princess and action packed version (I don’t like Twilight Princess myself, but that was the expectation).
The controller wasn’t particularly Nintendo-like, but more of a perversion of the PlayStation dual-shock controller littered with needless complexities that seemed to be more about fitting a certain aesthetic than functionality. It was poorly designed. The L&R buttons were squishy and made an irritating plasticky springy noise when pushed; the Z-trigger was easy to misplace because of its tiny size and weird positioning; the C-stick seemed like it was missing its nub; the D-pad was tiny and stiff; the diamond facebutton configuration was replaced with a big green button in the middle of a tiny red button and two oddly shaped grey buttons that made traditional button combos near impossible making it unviable for many Virtual console games (go no further than Mario World to see what I mean), and other games had to be compromised in their control schemes (like SSX games) or cancelled altogether (like certain Capcom fighters).
The issue that made me abandon the Gamecube wasn’t any of the annoyances with button sizes or placement, but it did have to do with the controller. The shape of it forces people’s hands to conform a certain way, which caused a lot of pain on the edges of my hands for action games - especially Mario Kart Cubed and the GC port of Soul Calibur. Keep in mind, I am unusually tall and have unusually large hands, but I’m I’m not alone in this. As a side note, my favourite console of the generation, the Dreamcast, had a similar controller issue, but not nearly as severe, and I could adjust my hands allowing me to play games like Soul Calibur for hours. But this was my main reason for abandoning the Gamecube. To this day, I have an aversion to controllers with those more rounded designs.
Overall, I’d say it’s because the Gamecube was a flawed Playstation with poor aesthetic choices, missing features, and a lack of the creative trendsetting that made Nintendo great in the past, and great in the future. Sony is going to beat Nintendo at making a Gamecube-like console on their experience and expertise. Just like Nintendo soundly defeated them in the motion gaming and handheld fields.
The consequence of Gamecube was that it was the more expensive R&D, marketing, and development. This is why Nintendo had its first red fiscal quarters in decades during that generation despite the handheld division selling quite well; Financially, Nintendo had fallen off the boat and GBA was the life preserver while Gamecube was a cinder block tied to its leg. It’s also the console I believe Miyamoto was most critical of, as I don’t even recall him badmouthing the Virtual Boy.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
