maybe because it had amazing looking exclusives like Shadow of the Collossus, Silent Hill 3 and Metal Gear Solid 3?

Metal Gear Solid 3 sold less than Melee or Sunshine.

Silent hill and Collossus was a niche games...

That's not the reason, what is the best seller on PS2? Grand Theft Auto...

The TRULY reason is just the marketing, the sales of the PS2 games confirmed this.

A far more capable console (bigger levels, online, DVD player, HDD, Dlc, etc) with appealing exclusives and ports of games like SF Anniversary Collection. Plus, in any "Head to head" comparison, the Xbox version of pretty much every game was the winner.

Xbox had a lot of unique selling points for a console at that time:

- It was the only console to get a lot of Western third-party games due to how easy it was to transition from PC.

- Online was a cut above the offerings from Nintendo or Sony

- Halo was the new console FPS

It's not all about power of course but higher performance allows for greater game experiences in most genres.  The PS2 still outperforms the gamecube in some areas, full dvd drive, 5.1 sound, more main memory, more video memory, more high definition games (gran turismo etc), dvd movie playback. There are quite a few games that are better on ps2 than gamecube just because the gamecube simply hasn't got the storage.

The gamecube was a simple design though with a simple single layer top loading optical drive. It was designed for maximum performance at minimum cost and does that well. Despite its low sales was still profitable for Nintendo which could not be said for the xbox which was often sold at a huge loss and Nvidia screwed them over with the licensing agreement to the point that Microsoft had to abandon it early because Nvidia expected the same royalties on the console even when sold at a fraction of its original price.

To be honest I was always more happy with the games on gamecube and xbox over ps2 mainly I think because the ps2 had such grotty graphics output quality that looked terrible on my AE100 projector at the time. 

According to an issue of PSM, just before the Gamecube and Xbox launched, the battle was already over.  I didn't want to believe it, though.  Third parties were already happy with the PS2 and its install base and the public (via poll) weren't even considering the competition, even as a second console.  I thought they were full of crap.  I kept saying to myself "Wait 'til you see what Nintendo can do!" or "Xbox is just another Atari."

Big was wrong.

Power wasn't the selling point. Games and brand recognition/loyalty were.

To me i bought a xbox for Kotor i was so hyped for that game and it all came true i was so happy! And Halo offcourse Halo 1 was and is the best

Because it sold more consoles.

they sold to nintendo fans not core gamers (other people) . Xbox got GTA it didnt make a difference 

Halo + Toon Link


While Wind Waker is a great game at the time it was a HUGE fail hype wise. Had Nintendo delivered the next OoT the Gamecube would have faired much better. The main issue it faced is people viewing it as the kids console, and when they revealed their most mature 1st party franchise with Cartoon graphics it lost all hype.

That said the Gamecube has a 10x better library than the original Xbox. But hype sells a lot, particularly back in 01-03 when most gamers were still under 18.