What do you guys think? From those who lived through and experienced the GBA & GC era at the time, what made the GBA so much more appealing than the Gamecube to people?

I often here a lot of times that a big reason why the Gamecube failed was due to its kiddy image, but the GBA seemed to have just as much of that image but still sold far more, it also didn't neccesarily get alot of the bestselling mature 3rd party games either. So what did the what made the GBA much more appealing?

The Gamecube failed because there was little reason to own one.

PS2 had more games and played DVDs, and Xbox had Halo. The only thing Gamecube had in its favour was Nintendo games, and Nintendo shot itself in the foot there by taking a lot of its games in an unappealing direction, like Mario Sunshine featuring Mario as a janitor at a monotonous resort setting, Zelda looking like a children's cartoon, Double Dash overcomplicating Mario Kart's simple appeal, Donkey Kong doing the lame bongo gimmick, Starfox becoming a mediocre Zelda clone, etc.

GBA had the benefit of having hardly any competition and it was more in line with the tastes of its target audience.

1. The GBA launched at half the GameCube's price and its games were often significantly cheaper.
2. There was no major competition in the handheld space from 2001 to 2004.
3. The GBA had main series Pokemon games, which can basically carry any platform to decent success.
4. The GBA was compatible with something like 2000 GB and GBC games dating back to the 80's. The GameCube couldn't even play N64 games.
5. The GBA was a great candidate for porting/remaking NES and SNES games, which were high quality games that weren't easily available. Examples include the Super Mario Advance quadrilogy, Link to the Past, Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land, Classic NES series, and various compilations.
6. When Nintendo released the DS, they continued to support the GBA for a couple more years with the Game Boy Micro, the Player's Choice line, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Mario spinoffs, publishing Square Enix ports, etc. Something like 20 to 25% of GBA's sold in Japan were sold after the DS's launch.

The GBA had no competition. But for Nintendo standards the GBA was a flopp. Just 80 million is nothing huge for them, especially compared to the GB. But it did OK.

Nintendo hasn't had a handheld that has flopped. They have all been profitable.
Parents see them as viable "entertainment devices" for their spawn so tend to buy one for each minion.

GBA was still riding the initial Pokemon craze which started in the West in 1999, so 2001 was not far off from that.

GameCube just had way stiffer competition and much less margin for error, the PS2 was the PS2, and the XBox had Halo. GameCube honestly was a much better system than the GBA, it just had far stronger headwinds going against it.

In hindsight the GameCube probably needed to launch in fall of 2000 and/or they needed to form a partnership with Microsoft and talk them out of making their own console and supporting them instead against Sony (which really would have been more to MS' benefit anyway as XBox hasn't been successful in supplanting the Playstation, lots of wasted money for not a lot of return). 

GBA. 90 bucks. Pokemon. Nintendo handhelds are undefeated. Its competition was Neo Geo Pocket Color. WonderSwan (in Japan only) Tapwave. N-Gage. GBA was seen as appealing to a younger audience without breaking the bank.

Gamecube. Cute looked console with Nintendo Nintendo-looking games in the era of the early 2000s everything needed to be edgy and "adult" which PS2 had in spades. It was cool. It had the "cool" games. Gamecube was not cool. Xbox had Halo and online. Sure Nintendo made some bonehead choices with Gamecube and did not do more to enhance third party relations. So it is partly on them for not adapting. It only played games and nothing cool like play DVDs. Then again we saw Nintendo trying to in that era with a GBA with tribal tattoos and Mario with Tribal tattoos. NOA trying to be edgy was the meme of Hello fellow children.

People like the Gamecube now but at the time it was embarrassing to the prime audience of PS2 and Xbox to be seen with one. The era of G4 and Spike TV. If it was cartoony or Japanese it was way uncool.

I think it should also be stated (in Nintendo's defence), that multi-console ownership is not common unless there is a lot of distinction in how the systems function. Even if Nintendo came out swinging with Twilight Princess and Mario Odyssey on Gamecube, I think the weight of exclusive IPs & variety on playstation side (Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, Tekken, GTA3) and how they reflected in public taste in more edgy, progressive media in gaming at the turn of the millenium, would put a hard ceiling on what Nintendo could achieve with their IP (IMO 30-ish million). Maybe that ceiling could of risen had Nintendo not launched a year later than PS2 and they couldn've eaten a bit more into that fixed console market pie which appears every generation to loosely be around 180-200m

In real terms I also think its worth stating that Nintendo could have lived healthily off a series of 30m selling home consoles as long they continue to
 
1. Sell hardware at a profit.
2. Have loyal fans which give 30-50% attach rates o their biggest 1st party software.

I do not think the gamecube was a financial failure but if anyone has the numbers correct me if I'm wrong.

Sony on the other hand could not survive off their IP alone back in 2001. They needed 3rd party software, and they needed to shift huge amounts of hardware to secure exclusibity and enough revenue from that software

Honestly? Pokemon

Nintendo selling Rare hurt, Rare was a huge N64 developer for them. It didn't launch with a Mario or Zelda game. Luigi's Mansion was a good game, but short and not a great launch game. Zelda was first shown off as an epic game, and when it was shown a few years later it was a cartoon game that made a lot of people furious. It was a fantastic game, but people didn't want to give it a chance because of the graphics. Mario Sunshine was the only flawed major Mario game and didn't have much variance in it's levels. I played Mario Sunshine a few years ago on the 3D collection, and actually enjoyed it a lot more than I did on the Gamecube. Now having the Resident Evil exclusive deal I thought should have brought in gamers. RE Remake and 4 were fantastic games that deserved more sales. 4 ended up coming to the PS2 later on. I personally bought the PS2 near launch and it was my first non Nintendo system. I bought it originally for the DVD player and to play the Square rpg's that I didn't play on the PS1 since I had the N64. I got the Gamecube a few years later for $99, and I ended up loving the Gamecube more than I did the PS2. There were so many fantastic games on the Gamecube. Tales of Symphonia is one of my favorite JRPG games ever, RE Remake and 4, Eternal Darkness, Viewtiful Joe, Wave Race, Baten Kaitos, and so many more Nintendo made games were fantastic.