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Forums - Sales - Why do you think OG Xbox often viewed as successful and Gamecube as unsuccessful, when they sold almost the same

curl-6 on 06 May 2026
HoloDust said:
curl-6 said:

In that regard, I would contend that Xbox actually failed as it did not prevent the PS2 from dominating the living room.

I'd say that OG XBOX stopped Sony from having monopoly in that market, gave alternative platform to devs (especially PC devs) and set the stage for both 360 and the way how consoles are designed in the future (as PCs in the box). So, from my POV, it did its job fairly well.

I guess the way is see it is that without Xbox, Sony still technically wouldn't have had a monopoly as Gamecube was still a thing and did almost as well as Xbox. (And may well have done better without Xbox by scooping up some of its buyers)

Xbox being there didn't really make much of a difference as far as Sony dominating the living room that generation, Xbox got absolutely crushed in sales by the PS2.

It was absolutely an influential console though, agreed there.

Last edited by curl-6 - on 06 May 2026

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Chrkeller on 06 May 2026
LudicrousSpeed said:

It’s kind of like how one NFL team can have an 8-9 season and it’s seen as a success and another (probably Cowboys) can have an 8-9 season and it’s a failure. It’s all about expectations.

Exactly.  The Panthers had a very successful season last year.  Ravens and Chiefs, not so much.  



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Wman1996 on 06 May 2026

Both fell below expectations of their corporations.
As said on this thread, Microsoft at one point seriously saw 50 million units as a target.
I'm pretty sure Nintendo expected GameCube to sell notably more than N64 and it sold over 10 million units less.
Xbox established Xbox hardware, Xbox Live, and Halo. GameCube was not as important to Nintendo by comparison.



Lifetime Sales Predictions 

Switch: 159 million (was 73 million, then 96 million, then 113 million, then 125 million, then 144 million, then 151 million, then 156 million, then 161 million)

PS5: 116 million (was 105 million, then 115 million, then 122 million)

Xbox Series X/S: 38 million (was 60 million, then 67 million, then 57 million. then 48 million. then 40 million)

Switch 2: 120 million (was 116 million)

PS4: 120 mil (was 100 then 130 million, then 122 million) Xbox One: 51 mil (was 50 then 55 mil)

3DS: 75.5 mil (was 73, then 77 million)

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BraLoD on 06 May 2026

Xbox was a good start for Microsoft, meanwhile the Gamecube market 3/3 for their new console selling less than before (SNES, N64 and GC), by that point Nintendo consoles had only sold less and less as they moved generations, so it was an ever present downward trend which couldn't been seen as good at all



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angrypoolman on 06 May 2026

Only thing that matters is championships. Both are failures.



Total Championships: Nintendo - 4, Sony - 2, Atari - 1, Microsoft - 0, Sega - 0

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Soundwave on 06 May 2026
HoloDust said:
curl-6 said:

In that regard, I would contend that Xbox actually failed as it did not prevent the PS2 from dominating the living room.

I'd say that OG XBOX stopped Sony from having monopoly in that market, gave alternative platform to devs (especially PC devs) and set the stage for both 360 and the way how consoles are designed in the future (as PCs in the box). So, from my POV, it did its job fairly well.

GameCube just would have sold more if there was no XBox. 

GameCube had a lot of good things going for it including significantly better hardware than the PS2, it just got drowned out by too many systems all trying to basically do the same thing and MS willing to lose like $120/system back then. 

No XBox and people would've come around to the GameCube having some really strong exclusives (Metroid Prime, Resident Evil 4, Wind Waker, etc.), better graphics than the PS2, and easier to program for to developers.



HoloDust on 07 May 2026
Soundwave said:
HoloDust said:

I'd say that OG XBOX stopped Sony from having monopoly in that market, gave alternative platform to devs (especially PC devs) and set the stage for both 360 and the way how consoles are designed in the future (as PCs in the box). So, from my POV, it did its job fairly well.

GameCube just would have sold more if there was no XBox. 

GameCube had a lot of good things going for it including significantly better hardware than the PS2, it just got drowned out by too many systems all trying to basically do the same thing and MS willing to lose like $120/system back then. 

No XBox and people would've come around to the GameCube having some really strong exclusives (Metroid Prime, Resident Evil 4, Wind Waker, etc.), better graphics than the PS2, and easier to program for to developers.

And yet, MS, going into panic mode, saw only Sony and PS2 as a Trojan horse of sorts that can threaten MS's core business. They feared that if Sony "owned" the living room with a device that didn't run Windows, developers would stop writing software for PCs and start writing for Sony’s proprietary architecture and could eventually move into the office. Yeah, I know...seems crazy from this POV, yet XBOX was born out of it.

As I said, from my perspective, it did what it was intended to do - stop Sony's monopoly, not just gamer wise, but more importantly developer wise, offered platform to PC devs and paved way to both how consoles and games for them are made in the future. No, it didn't do what Sony did to Nintendo with PS1, but I doubt anyone expected that exact result back then anyway.



Soundwave on 07 May 2026
HoloDust said:
Soundwave said:

GameCube just would have sold more if there was no XBox. 

GameCube had a lot of good things going for it including significantly better hardware than the PS2, it just got drowned out by too many systems all trying to basically do the same thing and MS willing to lose like $120/system back then. 

No XBox and people would've come around to the GameCube having some really strong exclusives (Metroid Prime, Resident Evil 4, Wind Waker, etc.), better graphics than the PS2, and easier to program for to developers.

And yet, MS, going into panic mode, saw only Sony and PS2 as a Trojan horse of sorts that can threaten MS's core business. They feared that if Sony "owned" the living room with a device that didn't run Windows, developers would stop writing software for PCs and start writing for Sony’s proprietary architecture and could eventually move into the office. Yeah, I know...seems crazy from this POV, yet XBOX was born out of it.

As I said, from my perspective, it did what it was intended to do - stop Sony's monopoly, not just gamer wise, but more importantly developer wise, offered platform to PC devs and paved way to both how consoles and games for them are made in the future. No, it didn't do what Sony did to Nintendo with PS1, but I doubt anyone expected that exact result back then anyway.

They would have been better off just staking the GameCube and working out a deal with Nintendo. Having two weak secondary options didn't stop Sony from doing anything, in fact it would be preferable to Sony to have the competition split like that rather than having one strong no.2. They could have just made games like Halo for the GameCube exclusively and maybe weened Nintendo towards allowing Windows CE to be used like Sega did in the GameCube development environment. 

Instead they wasted billions of dollars on the XBox to accomplish very little. 

They should have been paying attention to Apple, that was where the real threat was, not Sony. Because of that, the primary computer a lot of people use most today is a device running an Apple or Android OS, Microsoft just missed the boat entirely on that. No one cares about a console OS today. 



HoloDust on 07 May 2026
Soundwave said:
HoloDust said:

And yet, MS, going into panic mode, saw only Sony and PS2 as a Trojan horse of sorts that can threaten MS's core business. They feared that if Sony "owned" the living room with a device that didn't run Windows, developers would stop writing software for PCs and start writing for Sony’s proprietary architecture and could eventually move into the office. Yeah, I know...seems crazy from this POV, yet XBOX was born out of it.

As I said, from my perspective, it did what it was intended to do - stop Sony's monopoly, not just gamer wise, but more importantly developer wise, offered platform to PC devs and paved way to both how consoles and games for them are made in the future. No, it didn't do what Sony did to Nintendo with PS1, but I doubt anyone expected that exact result back then anyway.

They would have been better off just staking the GameCube and working out a deal with Nintendo. Having two weak secondary options didn't stop Sony from doing anything, in fact it would be preferable to Sony to have the competition split like that rather than having one strong no.2. They could have just made games like Halo for the GameCube exclusively and maybe weened Nintendo towards allowing Windows CE to be used like Sega did in the GameCube development environment. 

Instead they wasted billions of dollars on the XBox to accomplish very little. 

They should have been paying attention to Apple, that was where the real threat was, not Sony. Because of that, the primary computer a lot of people use most today is a device running an Apple or Android OS, Microsoft just missed the boat entirely on that. No one cares about a console OS today. 

I don't think that Nintendo, set in their traditional ways, would be easily convinced. That's why MS needed XBOX, to show developers there is alternative and promote DirectX as that alternative. And that worked.

But yeah, they indeed made numerous blunders elsewhere - as per Bill Gates "The greatest mistake ever is the whatever mismanagement I engaged in that caused Microsoft not to be what Android is, [meaning] Android is the standard non-Apple phone form platform. That was a natural thing for Microsoft to win".

That and neglecting to realize that Steam will become as big as it has, and not counteracting in time (which will cost them even more in the future).