Was Nintendo right to opt out of the graphics arms race?

[Chrkeller]

Soundwave said:

Leynos said:

Nintendo was in no danger of going bankrupt with Gamecube. Also while Gamecube had the worst 3rd party support it's 1st party was mighty strong as usual with Nintendo consoles.

Because the hardware was very well designed and cost efficient. If they did what MS was doing and losing like $150-$200 per console, sure they would have gone bankrupt because that was an ass-backwards way of running a game division (MS hasn't really gotten much smarter since then which explains why they are now on their way out have accomplished a whole lot of nothing). It's not really surprising now looking back on that time that they decided they couldn't just keep sticking with trying to be in a pissing match with MS/Sony of that time. Today things are a bit different. 

The 1st party support of the GameCube was actually a big problem, it wasn't good enough. Mario Sunshine/Wind Waker/Metroid Prime/Smash/MK Double Dash were a big step down sales wise from Mario 64/Zelda: OoT/GoldenEye 007/Mario Kart 64/Smash 64. Smash Melee is really the only Nintendo IP that saw a growth in sales. They just weren't on their game that gen. They needed what Mario Galaxy was instead of Sunshine and they needed Zelda: Twilight Princess, not Wind Waker, and even with that they'd be hurting with no GoldenEye 007 equivalent. 

Sometimes I wonder about you and Nintendo consoles.  First you didnt know the S2 was $450, now you seem unaware that Twilight was a gamecube game.

The N64 sold well because Nintendo was a household name at that time, coming off the SNES.  But the N64 lineup was super weak from a volume perspective, the ps1 killed it. 

So Nintendo, going into the GC, didn't have their great reputation, Sony took their crown.  The reason the GC didn't sell wasn't because no Goldeneye, it was because Sony was the household name with the superior lineup.  

The n64 and GC had great exclusives, but their third party support was garbage compared to Sony.  

Plus at that time Nintendo was splitting their software between home and portable.  What makes the switch great isn't the hardware, it is the software no longer being split between two platforms.  

Edit

And of course over the years Sony has lost a lot of exclusives to PC, Nintendo and MS.  Which reduces the value of owning their hardware.  This especially true with the rise of indie games.  

Hardware has never mattered, software does. 

Last edited by Chrkeller - on 25 January 2026