interesting, nintendo might have not been as concerned with the GC when they had the GBA, since they were kind of in a slump with having the gameboy sucessor being delayed for like HALF A DECADE at that point, with the GBC being a stopgap that only really didn't show any gaps in sales due to the pokemon craze.

Its the same thing with the wii U if you think about it. nintendo likely paniced at the 3ds's initial low sales so they literally did EVERYTHING they could to get it to sell, and only had time to go back to the wii U around the 3ds's year 3. the vita failing was just collateral damage due to nintendo pushing the 3ds so hard, i think.

remember, there were real threats to the gameboy color coming around around the end of its life cycle, untill the GBA came out and blasted all competion away to the point that the only portable threat nintendo ever faced afterwards is sony dumping a tonne of influence and money on the psp

You can attribute many outside factors but what I posted also shows. Nintendo's old guard was just too stubborn and arrogant to allow Gamecube to succeed. NOA tried to make Gamecube edgier with those commercials. (look them up they are dark and edgy) but the edgy commercial with Mario doesn't work. Nintendo did secure the rights to Resident Evil and games like Killer 7 (K7 and RE4 were supposed to stay GC exclusive) but Nintendo still looked like the meme Hello fellow kids meme. I don't think the disc capacity was that big a deal in the case of Gamecube. This was not as extreme as N64. Multi disc games were nothing new. 360 had the same issue and did fine. Blue Dragon comes on 4 discs. The kiddie image can be overcome as shown by Wii by changing demographics and Switch changed demo's from Wii U. Nintendo's messenging with GCN was confusing. It's for adults now with edgy ads...then shows Wind Waker. We also have Reident Evil...on a Fisher Price controller. Just a very mixed and out of touch message. Tho yes not being able to play a DVD was a factor. Just not the main one.

If it was profitable for Nintendo, then it wasn't a failure.

Some people also claim PS1 looked better than N64 haha. I don't know what it is that makes people claim PS1 and PS2 had better graphics and were more powerful than N64 and Gamecube, but obviously anyone who has played both those systems knows it isn't true.

As has been stated, there were numerous reasons why GC failed. "Kiddy" design of console played into that kiddy stereotype, weird controller config, smaller discs, still struggling to gain 3rd parties after the exodus of 3rd parties on N64, the big games of the gen were basically Halo and GTA. I had a friend who worked at a toy store and he said he would actually dissuade people from buying a gamecube cuz he thought it was lame - I guess that pretty much sums it up, Gamecube was considered by consumers to be not as cool as the other two.

That said, that was the one gen I had all the systems during their lifecycles and PS2 was my least favorite. I got GC the day it came out and loved it, but actually may have liked the Xbox even more by the end of the generation. Games like Halo, Halo 2, Half-life 2, Star Wars: KOTOR, Star Wars Battlefront 1 and 2, and Ninja Gaiden were among my very favorite games that gen, all of them xbox exclusives except I think the two SW:Battlefront games which were also on PS2 but were superior on Xbox. Gamecube had greats like Sunshine (though it was received badly at the time), Wind Waker (also received badly), Metroid Prime, Smash bros, MK Double Dash - but I feel it was just slightly inferior to the Xbox when it comes to top quality games and outside of Double Dash and Smash Xbox was the better party system. PS2 was good, but I was in college and didn't really have time to play long ass RPGs anymore (even though they were my favorite genre on SNES), and I after playing Vice City for a couple weeks it just got boring so I realized I didn't like GTA and wasn't interested in Gran Turismo, so while I enjoyed my PS2 it was definitely the least played system for me by far and was probably just used more as my dvd player for a few years. College was a lot of Double Dash, Smash, and Battlefront, (okay and we got obsessed with Donkey Konga for a couple months!), and then after college I played through Halo 1 and 2, KOTOR, and Half-life 2 before Wii Sports took over everyone's life haha.

The simple answers to that is A) Grand theft Auto 3, B) DVD drive in PS2 for £199 when a normal DVD player was £150 ish , C) It looked like a childs Nursery toy. D) Sequel to "Greatest game of all time" looked like a childs game.

It had no Golden Sun.

For sure that was the reason.

Yes and the RAM chips too, some of GCN third party games were planned to come then stealth cancelled/canceled because of limitation RAM capacity, like Max Payne which was highly demanding back then the devs couldn't port to GCN hardware.

I'm not suppose to share ancient post via forum, sigh whatever! xD

Source:
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33601943

PS2 despite more raw power than even Dreamcast. It was a difficult machine to work on and even had some limitations where even Dreamcast did things better. Why PS2 textures look so blurry. DC was very good at that. PS2 also had no AA but DC did. But raw polygon power PS2 outclassed it. Not saying it doesn't exist. Not found a PS2 game pushing more than 6MPPS. Where the highest found in Gamecube so far in what I've seen is 9MPPS with Rogue II. Dunno on Xbox. Not seen it tested where I look.

https://segaretro.org/Sega_Dreamcast/Hardware_comparison#PlayStation_2

Gamecube, Xbox and DC were easier to develop for than PS2. A contrast from the PS1 being the easiest of it's generation.

For me the question is why certain games sell so many systems while other games don't. Why didn't a game like Goldeneye give the N64 more of a push since it was so universally beloved, revolutionary, and mature? Why did the graphics of Donkey Kong Country and Gears of War give their consoles such a push while the graphics of Rogue Leader didn't do the same for the Gamecube. Why did a game as popular as Melee not sell systems? What changed from the first Animal Crossing to later entries that the series exploded and became such a huge hit and system seller only afterwards?

Games can only help so much if the system isn't appealing to the consumer in the first place. After the first year no game could have saved the Wii U, but the PS4 sold like hotcakes without any notable exclusives for its first year. The PS2 also sold very well despite its launch lineup sucking. Having the multiplats like GTA3 would not have helped the Gamecube much, because people would still just buy them on PS2 instead. System seller games have more than just quality or mass appeal on their side. They also have perfect timing. The only game that could have maybe saved the Gamecube if it had released by holiday 2002 was Resident Evil 4, and even then I don't think it would have done much, maybe give it a little boost to beat the Xbox.

Nintendo was profitable, the GameCube was not.

Nintendo profited despite the GameCube. They had a booming handheld business, stock sale income, and favourable exchange rates. The offset was enough to cover the losses of the home console division and turn a profit. Granted, this period saw Nintendo's lowest profits in the last 34 years, outside of the Wii U era.

The GameCube was only responsible for about 1/5th of Nintendo's total revenue during the era, despite home consoles being the primary focus of internal operations. GameCube's actual revenue from the sale of all hardware and software is not much higher than the cost to run Nintendo. I'd also guess Nintendo's handheld division turned larger margins on manufacturing and sales-related cost vs sales revenue given the retail prices were comparable. Gamecube's profits were nowhere near enough to cover the costs related to it and therefore was a loss.

Gamecube, as a result, cut heavily into Nintendo's profits generated from other/corporate income and handhelds.