Pokémon saves every system it’s on lol

Losing Rare hurt, but probably even more specifically losing James Bond really hurt. 

GoldenEye 007 was a massive part of the reason the N64 managed to top 30 million sold, Yamauchi never should have listened to Rare and should have renewed the rights to the 007 license and had another team work on the IP if Rare didn't want to. 

Also little known fact, Yamauchi was the one who purchased the rights for GoldenEye 007. It's been stated or implied that it was Rare that pushed for it, which wasn't true. Yamauchi bought the rights and then Rare was kinda nudged into being the developer as they were UK based. 

Rare's staff was the one that talked Nintendo out of renewing the license in favor of Perfect Dark, had that game delayed multiple times, and then Rare was gone entirely. That went about as badly as possible for Nintendo, it's also a lesson that you can't let the inmates (devs) run the asylum. If the GoldenEye team wanted to work on Perfect Dark instead, fine, I would have just assigned another team at Rare or Retro or whatever to the Bond series. This is a business, not an after school "do what you feel like" club. 

The GameCube basically had no Bond, Mario Sunshine wasn't there at launch and wasn't as impactful as Mario 64 (not even close), and Zelda was cel-shaded which seriously hurt it's marketability. And then Mario Kart came out far later in the GameCube's product cycle too versus Mario Kart 64. All were bad decisions. It's like giving the coach a team that has 4 star players on it, but all 4 of them are hurt and one of them can't even play period. 

Because--gulp--handhelds and home consoles are separate markets.

The Gamecube had to compete with the PS2. Nothing was going to defeat Sony's beast. Nothing.

The GBA had no competition and was only $99.99 US at launch, which pretty much made it an impulse item.

GBA had a shorter lifespan, and the success of DS meant GBA could be firmly replaced instead of surviving until 2009-2011. We don't have exact sales numbers of Game Boy and Game Boy Color separately, but GBA outsold either one on their own and in less time. 

As for the thread topic, I've seen it as pretty obvious.

1. Game Boy Advance had no meaningful competition in the handheld space. The few handhelds there were got pummeled by over 10 to 1 in lifetime sales. By time PSP launched, Nintendo already had launched DS.

2. Pokemon. I'm not discounting Mario and other Nintendo titles, but Pokemon is the killer app. 

Yeah, GBC didn't have any competition either since Sega had already dropped out of the handheld market by the late 90s. So the entirety of the GBA being Nintendo's primary handheld until the release of the DS, there was quite literally no competition. It's amazing that the GBA still managed to sell over 80 million units when it only had 3 years of the actual limelight to itself. Really shows how little competition there was.

Plus, Pokémon still riding a high at that time. Literally the top 3 best selling GBA games are Pokémon releases lol.

Yeah, I really miss having to distinct Nintendo consoles. They felt entirely different. Different versions of the same games, different controls, and with the DS/3DS lines, different UIs, software and music etc.

I really hope one day Nintendo makes another home console again... as illogical as that may be. 

They had competition just nothing that would unseat Nintendo. Game.com. Neo Geo Pocket/Color. Wonderswan in Japan did ok getting Final Fantasy ports. GBA had Tapwave and N-Gage.

I think the distinction is that GBA had no significant competition. 

There technically were other handhelds at the time, but they offered no real resistance to GBA's dominance and were easily swept aside.

Welp, there was no real competition and Nintendo had the pleasure to have many household IPs to it in the form of SNES ports and new games. No other console before the PSP came were able to compete with it's offering and pricepoint.

I mean even with 20/20 hindsight it would be difficult for Nintendo to make it work with the GameCube given that Sony basically ran the table getting every bet correct and MS hit a massive home run by betting on Halo.

The best thing I would reccomend in hindsight is launch in fall 2000 .... you cannot give Sony a 18 month headstart, the gen is already over before it even starts and you need buffer zone from XBox too because Halo is the real deal for that time period as far as being a killer app.