They both were dissappointments, as in sales, to Nintendo. GC sold only 50% of what it was supposed to sell. And N64 was supposed to sell better than SNES. By quality of their games, both were very successful.
Few things about N64 and GC. In (also) this thread, couple of people have been a bit too hasty to tell why GC and N64 somewhat failed.
1. Cartriges: Yes, this has had a certain effect in lack of 3rd party, but the main reason propably has been "The Dream Team" (selected by Nintendo), which was supposed to be the only instance to develope for N64, after all, it was the high quality standards that took Nintendo so high in the 1980:s. But with this, Nintendo shot itself in the foot: everyone didn't want to take part to Nintendos DT, and everyone who didn't qualify, went to Sony published shitty games for PSX (i hope everyone remembers how shitty the first PSX games were).
Also the main reasons (besides costs) for Sony to select CD as a media for PSX, was that they had the tech ready and its storage was needed mainly for streaming FMV:s (to which PSX was designed for). Without FMV:s, bigger storage than N64 cartrige wasn't really needed.
2. Matsushita optical discs: They are DVD:s. Mini DVD:s. Same that the DVD camcorders use. They are cheaper than cartriges, but more expensive than standard DVD:s and have less storage. In fact, due to better design (compared to PS2), Gamecube didn't need bigger storage than 1,5GB, except for special cases.
3. GC:s lack of 3rd party support: When GC was released, it had pretty good 3rd party support (Nintendo did learn something about being a shithead to the most important business partners), but since PS2 had too big lead even at that point, and sales didn't boost, the support died quickly. In fact, GC was pretty much in the same situation that PS3 is at the moment.
@Cringer8: Yes, that game is a masterpiece, but one thing that you should notice, is that it was designed for N64.
Ei Kiinasti.
Eikä Japanisti.
Vaan pannaan jalalla koreasti.
Nintendo games sell only on Nintendo system.
