XP

That and the 3rd party went byebye

This....

I would add but HappySqurriel said all what I wanted to say :)

lol. It did look like a lunchbox and was purple for crying out loud

Because we live in a cruel godless world where bad things can happen to good consoles.

The third party support wasn't as big a deal as people make out. Nintendo had done a great deal to try to appeal to third parties, such as the mini-discs to discourage piracy, and an easy to code for console.

The first thing that hurt Nintendo was simply the N64. Though the N64 held its own against the PSX for about a year or two, it couldn't last, and that ended up hurting its reputation, and driving many gamers into Sony's camp.

Secondly, Nintendo may have learned from its N64 mistakes, but it made new ones. The "purple box" and "big colorful button" designs of the console and controller gave it a rep as "kiddie" (a fight that seems to have died down considerably in recent years, but back then it was about as bad a slur as one could hurl). The low cost, and Nintendo's inability to counter Sony's PR about the PS2 (which was mostly bull) convinced many it was the least powerful of the 3 consoles (it wasn't, and it was closer to the XB than it was to the PS2).

Nintendo further compounded their PR problems with their game choices. Again, this was the "anti-kiddie" era. Nintendo gave gamers Pikmin, SuperMario Sunshine and Celda. I think all three games were solid, but SMS was lambasted for not being as revolutionary as SM64 (what could be?), Celda people hated for its looks, and for not being as awesome as TOOT, and Pikmin was NOT what "anti-kiddie" gamers wanted in a new franchise (ironically, Eternal Darkness WAS, but for some reason, its sales tanked).

Speaking of games, lets look at the games in year one. Only SSB Melee really caught on with gamers. This at a time when HALO was emerging as a AAA IP, and GTA3 was a once-a-generation phenomenon. Add to that PS2's awesome 2001 lineup of MGS2, GTA3, Devil May Cry, and Final Fantasy 10, and its easy to see why so many went PS2.

And then there was DVD. Most people wanted a DVD player. PS2 and Xbox had them, GCN didn't. By 2001, DVD players (cheap ones, granted) could be had for $100 - exactly the price difference between the Cube and its rivals. So it was hard to see it as a great bargain (the same doesn't apply to BR & PS3 today simply because BR is not nearly as in demand as DVD was then).

Lastly (but not leastly) we have the third parties. As I said, Nintendo did do all it could to mend fences, and we did see a great many games on all three systems last gen, far more than we did in the PSX/N64 era. So what happened? Very simply, the gamers didn't support the third party games (why is a matter of debate, but in hindsight, it appeared only Ninendofans were buying the Cube, and they mostly buy Nintendo games). Also, publishers had a strong relationship with SOny, and SOny had the biggest base, so most of their efforts went into maximizing the PS2 version. Then MS started paying for extra content, and being the most powerful of the three consoles, it tended to get the best version. And that left the Cube as the odd game out, and even though it was more powerful than the PS2, it still ended up getting the worst version of the 3 ports. The whole thing became a self-defeating cycle - games don't sell, companies don't invest, games come out crappy, games don't sell. Without the large PS2 userbase, or the willingness to spread the cash like MS, Ninendo simply couldn't fix the problem. As the consoles fortunes waned, third parties were more than happy to abandon it.

It even had a handle, to make it more lunchbox

Nintendo LunchCube

i think it is because of the disc

no dvd player

Wow 1-4 sound like you are talking about the PS3 vs x360 this time around. Of course PS3 will be lucky to make 21M!