1) Nintendo were Dicks to third party during the 32/64 bit era, especially to Squaresoft and Enix. that sealed their fate in Japan....until the DS. that consequence continued in the 128 bit era.
2) Limited Storage for N64 and Gamecube games.
3) Mature games were the way to go in the last two generations.
4) both controllers for their previous two systems sucked.
5) No DVD Player
6) MGS2 stole the GC's (as well as the Dreamcast) thunder...completely....which led to Nintendo to get on their knees and beg for an MGS game....which was not on par with the original. (MGS2 and GC were both released in November of 2001 which MGS2 was INSANELY HUGE back then)
7) They lost almost all Exclusives
8) Rockstar Games skipped the GC because of the medium Nintendo used.

Phantasy Star Online hackers made the game not fun anymore. It was the only game worth playing.

Also, Square didn't really support it. All of the Consoles that Square doesn't support fail.

But the Xbox did not do well! It only sold a million or two more than the gamecube.

The gamecube did not do well simply becuase it was not what the public wanted. It just did not appeal to a lot of people including me (though i bought it about 2 years after it came out), also the play-station was the bees-knees, It had great games (many of them).

 oh yeah, the lack of online games, too. MS had Halo(and a ton of others),  Sony had SOCOM (and a ton of others), Nintendo had PSO and...that was it.

For the most part the GC was designed for kids, when the market had grown more mature. This gen Nintendo was smart by marketing to "the next big thing"... the casuals.

I know this is a board stroke but...

Kids/early teen (NES, SNES) --> Mature 20-30 something men (PS1, PS2) --> Casuals (Wii, next gen?)


BTW, I don't think casuals is a dirty word.

Lets see:

• Kiddie console with tons of Nintendo games (lack of 3rd party support)
• Worst console design in the past ~10+ years
• Bad brand image (N64 had ruined what they had during the NES/SNES years)
• Lack of core audience (audience was either kids, or hardcore Nintendo users) - Sony had already begun to gather the core audiences, and Microsoft was comitted to get the hardcore/PC users

The problem with their marketing was that they were indeed targeting younger kids - and had no games that anyone that was a teen, or SWM would give a care about, outside of an N-fanatic.

1) games. The GC's launch lineup had nothing on the PS2's 2001 holiday lineup. From there the ps2 simply had much better support, cornering every genre.

2) poor choice of using mini dvds instead of regular 4.7gb dvds (a continuation of a n64 problem). Some games by mid gen were already using dvd 9 on the ps2.

3) missed out on the dvd player market which was a huge selling point going into that generation of consoles. even the xbox kind of missed out here too by requiring people to buy an overpriced add-on remote to play dvd movies (presumably to cover the licensing cost).

4) definitely had an image problem. This was compounded by the fact that it didn't get some extremely popular mature games. The hugely popular GTA was seen as a playstation game even though it later appeared on xbox.

Carry over effect from the N64 being unable to get any top flight second or third party games like MGS and FF. Plus, Halo stole all the press when the Xbox and Gamecube launched.  Plus the original XBOX's price being under $200.00 before it had even been out for a year, Splinter Cell timed XBOX exclusive, the release of XBOX Live,  the Sega GT Jet Set Radio Future Bundle all for Christmas 2002.  Then KOTOR, Ninja Gaiden, and Halo 2. 

Are you talking about wii or gamecube? :O I really don't see any difference between last nintendo consoles. Other than the amount of shovelware that is.

Objection, relevance?