Yeah at the time Gamecube did not fit the era of edgy tone of the 2000s and trying to be a all in one entertainment device. The logo did and the NOA ads were edgy but the console did not look the part. Esp the controllers. I hate how PS2 looks and Xbox but they fit the era. I like the Gamecube design a lot and always have. That was one thing Reggie touched on before Wii was revealed (Revolution at the time) is he promised the next console would look sexy and Gamecube was not that.

Yeah Gamecube just really didn't catch the zeitgeist of the early 2000s.

Gaming was shifting more towards teenagers and young adults, and the vibe of the time was edginess, whereas Nintendo was still taking a very 90s approach to things that wasn't "cool" compared to the PS2 and Xbox.

The hardware itself was outstanding; powerful, small, reliable, and cheap, but none of that will get you anywhere if you're not in touch with the audience.

I'd actually say it's a real testament to how well designed it was that, with an overclock and some extra RAM, they were able to ride that chipset for another generation, even two in the case of its CPU. The fact that games like Breath of the Wild, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Assassin's Creed 4, Watch Dogs, Mass Effect 3, etc all ran on a beefed up Gamecube CPU is really something, you'd never for example get high end 6th gen games running on an overclocked N64 core.

Considering console manufacturers have always typically lost money on hardware and recouped it via software... Kinda makes this redundant.

From a consumers point of view it was a massive win, more hardware for less.
It was a better bargain than Gamecube and Playstation 2 in that regard.

It's called the Wii. Much more powerful.

Xbox 360 also cost Microsoft on every console sold... Again consoles losing money on hardware and recouping it with software is a standard practice.

The issue was ironically the nVidia contract, they weren't willing to budge on chip costs or work with Microsoft for a die shrink.
And that is why each and every single console from Microsoft since, use ATI/AMD Radeon... And why Sony never went back to nVidia after the PS3. (Also helps that AMD could build an APU)

And the consumers got better hardware as a result. It was a net win.
Multi-billion dollar companies losing money isn't our concern.

They absolutely did meet the claim.

The Gamecube not only had better paper specifications than the PS2, but it was also more efficient in every area... And efficiency is king.

Perception is stupidly important.

The Gamecube looking like a device meant for children (Although it was a great machine for mature gamers) didn't do it any favors, that styling just didn't fit more mature gamers.

The Gamecube hardware did get a second lease on life with the Wii... Which gave us some impressive looking games for that consoles specs.

My mistake, you are correct. 3GB of data was set aside for that.
Xenoblade and Breath of the Wild were great exemplars of what the WiiU could do... But it makes you wonder what they *could* have achieved had the hardware existed for a few more years.

The Nintendo 64 had many detractors...
Delaying the launch arguably opened the Market up for the PS1...

They lost Final Fantasy to Sony.
The carts hurt...

But the quality of games were never an issue with me on the N64, it had so many banging titles from Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Turok 1/2/3, Zelda OOT, Mario Kart, Lylat Wars and more... Today if i am given a choice, I would always reach for the N64 over the PS1 or Saturn.

Purple as your main color choice for a console was always insane frankly. Like if the NES was purple ... I don't think it would have done as well. Like I don't know it what era anyone would want a full on purple console lol. Yes the North American Super NES used purple but it was very subtle as an accent color.

The whole thing was a neat design, but also very stupid (lets just be honest).

If I was teleported back to 1999, I would tell Nintendo to ditch the Barney colored lunchbox design, that shit is not going to work, make a silver or black console, use full size discs, and move Perfect Dark and Zelda: Majora's Mask to the GameCube immediately. You have to launch in fall 2000, waiting until 2001 will give Sony too much time to basically lock the generation up and you'll be launching right into the XBox as well which will muddy the waters. You need that extra year to launch earlier, you do not have the time you think you have. 

The GameCube hardware was done by summer/fall 2000, they basically sat on it for an entire year because their software division wasn't on the ball. 

Obviously, I'd rather have a Bond game than Perfect Dark too but it was probably too late at that point to change that. They needed to get a large lead over the XBox to cement at least a stable no.2 position and not let Sony get that far ahead. 

There were 007 games on Gamecube/PS2, they just didn't pop off the way Goldeneye did without the talent of 90s Rare behind it.

It's not enough to just have the IP, you've also got to be able to make a great game with it. Goldeneye wasn't a phenomenon just cos it had the Bond license, it was cos it was a brilliant and innovative title that set new standards for the genre in both single and multiplayer.

If you made stuff like Agent Under Fire GC exclusive it wouldn't have really moved the needle.

Agent Under Fire sold like 5+ million copies, so that wasn't exactly bad. More than that Bond was becoming synonymous with the Nintendo brand, losing that was a big mistake. Bond is cool, you can't really even get cooler than Bond and he's also multi-generational, teenagers think he's cool, but so do parents. Nintendo didn't even fully leverage that enough, they were surprised that GoldenEye was a hit, they should have had TV commercials with Pierce Brosnan and various Bond girls for the N64. 

I would just have said to Rare like basically "look I'm paying your salary so you're going to make another Bond game because this is a business not a passion project art class, tough shit". 

By the time 007 came to PS2 generation we had a bunch of 007 games. N64 had other 007 FPS outside of Goldeneye. Plus it was a post Halo world and the concept of consoles with good FPS games was no longer novel. PS2/Xbox is loaded with FPS games. Some from franchises you may not expect like Robotech. Remember Painkiller or Damnation? Got a lot of strange ones then Medal Of Honor and the first CoD. XIII and many many more. Nintendo tried their M rated FPS on Gamecube with Giest. 007 games were a dime a dozen by then. So was the genre.

Agent Under Fire's sales (spread as they were across an install base of about 200 million) benefitted hugely from Goldeneye being so huge, but that didn't last long term cos players realized that these following titles weren't as great as Goldeneye.

The problem was that by the Gamecube generation, much of the talent that made Rare such a powerhouse on the N64 had left the building; a lot of key staff departed around the end of the N64 to early Gamecube gen. The Bond license itself was nothing enough (badum tsss) you had to have a dev behind it who could craft a megaton hit out of it.

The main talent that made Goldeneye made Timesplitters. Those were well loved so yeah. (I recently played them and don't think they aged well, that style of control is just so dated)

Geist being the supposed replacement for GoldenEye 007 is pretty much exhibit A on how you fail a console generation. It would be like Nintendo losing the Mario license and trying to replace that loss with Chibi Robo. Like what are we even doing here. 

The Bond movies only grew in popularity in the 90s too, Tomorrow Never Dies had more box office than GoldenEye, then The World Is Not Enough did better than Tomorrow Never Dies, and even the shitty Die Another Day die more than Tomorrow Never Dies, and the switch over to the Daniel Craig era with Casino Royale sent the franchise into the stratosphere making it more popular than ever.

Bond was also a fantastic way for Nintendo to be "cool and sexy" in that era without having to be gratuitously violent/off-putting like GTA. Parents know Bond, they don't care if their kid is playing a Bond game, but Bond also fully passes the "this is one bad ass motherfucker" test of any teenager/college age kid too. It was the perfect fit for Nintendo in that sense. 

Nintendo could have rode that wave of popularity, you're not inventing a character better than Bond, that just naive. Every other studio in Hollywood has tried for like 50 years. 

Without GoldenEye 007 I honestly doubt the N64 itself would have hit 30+ million consoles. They would've finished somewhere in the 20s, that game carried the system hard, I knew several PS1 owners who basically broke and had to buy an N64 so they could have GoldenEye nights at their house on weekends or have it in their dorm room etc. etc.