Syd Lexia wrote:

To say the GCN finished dead last is a disservice GCN: 21.74 units sold XBox: 24.09 units sold In the grand scheme of things, 3 million consoles isn't a meaningful gap. What slowed GCN sales at the end was; 1) MS literally threw money at companies for third party support, which Nintendo was unwilling to do. 2) Nintendo's own support slowed in later years, with several announced titles either being cancelled or moved to Wii. 3) Reggie made a lot of empty promises. He promised a mindblowing surprise at one point. It turned out to be the fucking Wavebird.

I agree with most of the points in this post, but you gotta admit that the Wavebird was pretty sweet.

The Xbox was a decent system with quite a few good games, however, I definitely agree that it is the least interesting console in the last generation. I would count Halo, Halo 2, Jade Empire, Kotor, Kotor 2 and Fable as the games to get for the system, and of course whatever multiplattform title that is marginally better than on the PS2.

Back to the Gamecube-discussion, I think it is fairly obvious that Nintendo used the minidvd's for two reasons. First, to keep the size of the cube itself down, and second to prevent piracy. However, the second reason is probably the most important one (and piracy was also one of the more important reasons why they stuck with the cartridge format on the N64). I also think that it is waaay over-exaggerated how much of a disadvantage this was for Nintendo. Of course a few games like GTA and Final Fantasy would need more discs to be ported to the cube, however, how much does an extra disc cost, 20 cent? Its nothing, and there have never been anything stopping game developers to use several discs if they feel that it is in the best interest of their game. That applies on the PC, the PS1, the Cube, the 360 and the PS2 which also had a fair of multidiscgames. However, the cube had a few huge disadvantages compared to their competitors, and here is ten that I all find much more important than the small discspace:
1) It was launched to late, and since the hardware was not a significant upgrade from the PS2, there was really no reason to wait for it for the casual consumer.
2) The PS2 launched as a successor to the hugely successful PS1 who was the most-selling console of all time by far. Playstation had supplanted "playing Nintendo" as the thing non-gamers said when refering to games, and the strong brand of that Sony had been able to build up from the success of the Playstation helped its successor - who was really a continuation of the style that made PS1 such a success - to retain a huge userbase from the PS1. Backwardscompatibility also helped with this.
3) In contrast to MS and Sony, Nintendo is a video game company only, and don't have the same opportunity as MS and Sony to do gambles like selling their hardware with a huge loss, as there is no other division in the company who can recuperate the loss. This is the main reason why Nintendo decided to post-phone the launch of the gamecube until it was profitable or nearly profitable from the start, and it helped Sony gain their big lead and MS to sell a technically superior console at about the same price.
4) Nintendo has had poor relationships with third-parties since forever. Nintendo started its strict policies regarding third-parties to avoid a new video game crash, but for the third-parties themselves, this was seen as a extremely unfavourable situation, so when the PS1 came in with the promise of low royalties (subsidized by the huge Sony Corporation) and no restrictions on content, the third-parties was just to eager to jump ship. Nintendo tried to rectify this with the gamecube, but the fall of Sega and the juggernaut that was the PS1 did not make putting games on the gamecube seem a lucrative proposition for most third-parties. MS rectified this problem by paying for development of the Xbox-version of lots of games, but in reality there was no way Nintendo could do something similar with their limited resources. The deals they did make, ended up being to little, to late, and - as was the case with the infamous Capcom 5 - most of the games ended up being ported anyways.
5) In the PS1-era Sony started the trend of paying for exclusivity/helping with the development budget. This was the case with the Metal Gear-series, the Final Fantasy-series, the Tomb Raider-series and the GTA-series. Nintendo was in no position to match this.
6) During the 16-bits area Sega successfully gave people the notion that Nintendo were for kiddies. Even though the gamecube saw Nintendo pay for games like Resident Evil 1-4, Zero and CV, Eternal Darkness, MGS:TS and Geist, there was no denying that the casual gamer saw Nintendo as something more geared towards kids with their strong mascots and colourful worlds.
7) Thanks to Nintendos conservative nature, Nintendo had been slow to release both the NES and the SNES in Europe, and as consequence, Sega - who was comparatively much faster to get out their Master System and Mega Drive - dominated many of the countries of Europe, including Norway where I lived. When Playstation arrived, Nintendo simply had a much weaker presence in the mindshare of european gamers compared to their american end japanese counterparts, and that is probably the main reason why Europe so quickly developed into "Sony-land". The Wii is still at less then 10 % of the market share here in Norway, and with the gamecube most shops did not even bother carrying it.
8 ) Nintendo's games were still great, but not revolutionary like in the N64-generation. Except for Metroid Prime, there was no real standout Nintendo-title on the gamecube. There were several awesome games of course, but nothing in the vein of Mario 64 or Ocarina of Time.
9) In the same way as with the last point, the Gamecube itself did not have any standout features that captured the mass market. The N64 had the analog stick and the rumble, but the gamcube was mostly a continuation of N64-path without any new features (except better graphics).
10) PS2 was the casual console. A lot of people don't see it this way, as there is no way the PS2 with its Final Fantasy and God of War can be considered "casual". Well, the PS2 was definitely hardcore as well, but lots of the 150 million PS2 owners bought it for Fifa, Madden, Singstar, Buzz, and here in Norway at least "Singstar-Party" was a huge thing, especially among girls during the early 2000's. In fact I know of lots of people who owns or owned a PS2, but I only know two (other than myself) who played games like God of War or Final Fantasy on it. That does not mean that nobody did - but it shows quite clearly that the PS2 managed to penetrate a kind of consumer that would not normally play video-games - actually in much the same way as Nintendo have managed with the Wii (which makes it even more strange how far the PS3 is from this legacy). And most of my friends who had PS2 for these kind of games, actually bought a Wii for the same kind of games that Nintendo successfully copied and reinvented in this generation.

So these are 10 reasons I all think is more important than the small storage space on the minidvd. Suffice to say, I don't really think the poor online capabilities had that much to do with the weak gamecube-sales either, as the market leader by far did not really have any online to speak of either (even though the positive sales of the Xbox was probably helped by its good online). In conclusion, Nintendo always faced an uphill battle with the Gamecube, thanks to their legacy of poor third-partyrelations, their failure to innovate and their status as only a video game company. And in my opinion, this makes it even more impressive the way they have turned around their fortunes with the Wii.