The following polls were conducted in the last two weeks over at GameFAQs, (www.gamefaqs.com), which has a very large number of users, mainly from the United States, male and under 30 judging from past polls. Based on this, everyone ought to have bought both the GC and N64 because they had one of each of their favourite ever series of games within a genre on them. In bold are the most popular results for each poll. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What's your all-time favorite 3D fighting series? Dead or Alive 6.08% Dragon Ball Z: Budokai/Tenkaichi 7.54% Soul Calibur 16.41% Super Smash Bros. 53.48% Tekken 13.43% Virtua Fighter 3.06% What's your all-time favorite science fiction first-person shooter series? Doom 14.9% Half-Life 22.73% Metroid Prime 30.04% Quake 3.68% Serious Sam 1.35% Star Wars: Jedi Knight 8.95% Timesplitters 10.17% Unreal 8.18% What's your all-time favorite 2D platform game series? Bubble Bobble 1.93% Castlevania 14.03% Donkey Kong Country 5.96% Ghosts 'n Goblins 0.8% Mega Man 18.54% Sonic the Hedgehog 15.67% Super Mario Bros. 43.06% What's your all-time favorite 3D action adventure game series? Devil May Cry 6.67% God of War 6.25% Grand Theft Auto 16.29% Hitman 1.74% Metal Gear Solid 17.12% Prince of Persia 2.37% Spider-Man 1.25% The Legend of Zelda 46.73% Tomb Raider 1.58%

Many people bought those systems, if they lost the past gens is because of the casual gamers, that ironically are now supporting Wii.

 It's also no secret that the N64 had some of the greatest games of all time on it that defined multiple genres (Mario64, Pilotwings 64, Mariokart 64, both Zelda's, Goldeneye, ect) and the Gamecube also had quote a few great games that people still swoon over to this day (SSBM, Metroid Prime, Eternal Darkness, RE4).

it's becouse of the casuals like cebrain said. The Ps and Ps2 were a cooler and new for casuals. (and GTA)

Look at more past Gamefaqs polls, and I'm sure you'll find that there are an awful lot of Nintendo fans on there.  I'm sure many of them did buy a Gamecube and N64.  :)

I don't blame you for not getting paper mario because it was a very obscure title, but you MUST play both games at some time in your life. Paper mario has been anounced for virtual console and try and find a copy of The Thousand Year Door in a bargin bin somewhere. The great thing about those games is that they do everything to throw all the rules of an RPG right 

out the window and it's what makes them so good. 

N64 and GCN had great games, some of the best imo. But PS1/PS2 had such a huge volume of games there was more broader appeal.

I believe it was Epic at GDC (2005/2006 can't remember) who asked the audience of mostly game developers "How many of you owned a Gamecube?" in an attempt to demonstrate that Nintendo was out of touch with most gamers; to his surprise most of the audience (about 75%) raised their hands.

A large portion of "core-gamers" love Nintendo for their high quality and purity when it comes to gaming ...

Nintendo "lost" the casual market with the N64 and then lost a lot of more core gamers with the Gamecube; as a guess the casual gamers went to the Playstation and the core gamers (in North America) went to the XBox. 

People buy a lot of stuff based on how "cool" it is, PSX and PS2 was the coolest of their era. So as said, casuals bought a lot of Playstations and most didn't buy more than one console. I may not have been the one that had your favorite games, but it was the coolest. PSX and PS2 also had the most games, so you had more to choose from.
Also people, who took part in the poll propably are people who had GC and/or N64.
There were only 4 genres listed, and there exists a lot more of them. Btw. since when Metroid Prime has been FPS?

I don't think "cool" was the reason why the PSX and PS2 were so successful, it was the games. Resident Evil 7, Final Fantasy 7, Grand Theft Auto 3, Tomb Raider 1, Dragon Quest 7, EA Sports, etc, the machines just has an overwhelming number of big third party games. Whoever gets that support (the big third party games) wins the race.