The GC wasn't that profitable, but some of you are thinking Nintendo would have failed without the GBA? They still made money, even if not that much?

If we considered profits alone, The Gamecube alone has been more profitable then Sony's entire gaming division since it's launch with PS1.

May I ask where this information is coming from?

www.vgchartz.com

http://vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=57802

Unless theres a clear distinction between the highly profitable GB/GBA/DS of the time and the Gamecube one cannot say that the Gamecube made massive profits. I haven't seen anything which proves beyond a doubt the performance of the Gamecube as a profit driving entity. Does anyone have such proof.

Xbox outsold Gamecube. Xbox is therefore is second. Deal With It!

If some multibillionaire came out with a console as powerful as the X-box and sold it at a huge loss for £1 or $1 per console, with the result that it sold 200 million units because it was so cheap, would that mean the console took first place?

Not sure on the answer myself, just trying the old reductio ad absurdum on this sales-driven logic...

The Game Cube did make profit, Nintendo didnt spent that much money on it, and it didnt sold that bad, on the least it paid itself, if you Sony you clearly see all the waste

The OP is like people in the Southern US that are still pissed off about the Civil War.

MOVE ON ALREADY.

Ok... honestly you cannot change the parameters of a race to shoe horn your team into a desired ranking.

More importantly, the reason sell-to consumer numbers are the yard stick by which consoles historically competed is because that is how 3rd party publishers generally made their decisons. The higher install base recieved the most risk. Because of that old paradigm, being a loss-leader was actually a good stradegy (even though I consider the gillette business stradegy stupid and in the long term too easy for competition to exploit) since hardware losses would be more than subsidized by software profits and liscense fees.

However, all of this has changed and can be thrown out the window. Sony was the loss-leader expert and in true sony style - Sony simply took gillette's innovative business plan and applied it to the games industry. The disruption worked well for PS1 and PS2, but both MS and Nintendo have exploited all of the weaknesses Sony's business plan had for masive damage this generation. The Wii is profitable on both the HW and SW side both of which are remarkably cheaper than the PS3/Xbox360 HW and SW which has changed the enviroment completely. MS on the other hand has only increased their market share in 4years of life by a little less than 33% (24M compared to 32M), they remain in second place, but have shown that even with less install base they can increase how lucrative their platform is for developers and publishers by adding other value, such as xbox live.

All in all... install base will still be the measure of success, but it is no longer nearly as meaningful. Just look at Wii, it has the largest install base but 3rd party devs consider it far too risky.