The console that Nintendo regrets

Nintendo have had their fair share of consoles, but there's one which Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto says he regrets. Let's talk about it!

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[gabeskai]

This.... actually explains A LOT about Nintendo's weird decisions

[adamangeles]

Im sad that Miyamoto is displeased with my favourite console. Its design, controls and interface were so good

[hauntedlolita]

Ironically, the GameCube era, arguably, had Nintendo's best games.

[kriskropd]

What irony - the Nintendo Gamecube was my favorite console because of the way games were designed on it. Technology-chasing is definitely a distraction that made consoles start looking more like PCs (and why I primarily became a PC gamer after that gen.), but that doesn't mean all the people designing and developing games thought that way. It might've been a period that Shigeru Miyamoto felt distracted, but it feels like a lot of design mistakes from early-3D were cleaned up by games of that era. We stopped seeing tank-controls and FPS games finally had a sensibly comfortable arrangement of buttons mapped almost universally. Characters had more attitude and games generally had more stylization as color and shapes weren't caught up in the photorealism trends yet (next gen featured those constant poopy-brown and boring grey color grading, if you've forgotten). Plus, next gen really adopted online connectivity and that ruined the appeal of consoles for me as that was too highly integrated into the interfaces and production roadmaps for games (leading to the absolute trash we have today with excessive patches and DLC and microtransactions).

Gamecube era was the best. Maybe not for Miyamoto or Nintendo's investors - but it was definitely the peak of console gaming in many retro-gamer opinions.

[Wilmer-.]

“We hate the GameCube.”
Everyone: *NO.*

[niccolobernardo]

PS2 had a DVD player built in. At the time DVD players were around the same price as a PS2, so people bought a PS2 instead of just a DVD player.

[doclouis]

I think you failed to mention how the Gameboy Advance sold better and was cheaper than the Gamecube.

Which made it easier for people to approach it and buy it because it was a handheld console while mobile gaming wasn't exactly the behemoth of the industry that it is today with how much money it now generates.

[MrChainChomp]

6:41 It's insane that they changed NOTHING from the games, and they were still insanely popular. Nostalgia is very powerful...

[atdynax]

My Game Cube hosts so many Zelda Games. And with the Game Boy Player I can rack it up even more.

[BassiKun]

I'm still shocked at the fact that the GameCube sold so poorly despite having some of the best games ever made.

[virtualvenus]

When are we going to get a video called “That time Chris Pratt voiced Mario”

[linkV]

Those consoles failed in part because Nintendo's relationships with third parties in those eras were terrible.

Third party publishers hated the cartridges on the N64, and the proprietary disc they made for the GC couldn't hold as much as the DVDs ps2 and Xbox were using, meaning GC missed out on a lot of games. First party Nintendo games are fantastic, but a console needs more than just first party games. The consoles with the best third party support almost always win the generation.

[lukedavies]

Funny since the gamecube has the most ambitious, creative, and fun games I’ve ever played. The controller is also arguably the most satisfying Nintendo controller. But going home at 2020 to play: super mario sunshine, luigis mansion, wind waker, twilight princess, paper mario, and metroid prime. These have to be some of the best Nintendo gaming experiences and people are starting to notice since the prices are sky rocketing due to supply and demand and the sheer amount of people wanting these games on switch.

[camharkness]

Its honestly hard to believe that the GameCube was a flop in some ways.

[whydoyoukeeptalking]

The difference between GC and its generations competitors was it aged like fine wine with 4 slots, many multiplayer games, an amazing controller, cool looking discs and a design thats small strong and very nintendo.
Ive rebought ps2s and x box to relive my childhood (halo, ff10 GT3 and 4, Ninja gaiden ect)..ended up selling em, buying and selling again. My gamecube though? The original i bought in 2003. Why? Cuz if the homies come over we know were gonna play super smash, mario kart, soul calibur and F zero. Plus a lot of amazing zelda, mario and metroid games and hidden gems.

[etherealessence]

"It single handedly killed Sega's console line after all"

I take HUGE exception to this. It wasn't the dreamcast that killed sega, it was the sega cd, sega 32X and especially the saturn that killed sega. The dreamcast was the console that could have saved sega, had they not already burned through their consumer base with badly supported products.

[antoninocuffaro]

I actually already knew that this was Nintendo’s worst console in terms of sales, but it’s so weird because I feel like this was the era for Nintendo game to really take off. Mario kart DD, Luigis mansion, pikmin, Pokémon XD gales darkness, and a lot more unique games that either kicked off a franchise, or impacted an existing on heavily.

[Littlefighter]

6:50 And this is when Nintendo realized the potential of getting the same game and releasing it over and over again.

[bitwize]

The Gamecube was more powerful than the PS2, but strictly less so than the Xbox. Its game format was also much smaller.

[LowerBlack]

I find it interesting. Sony has followed a "not broke, don't fix it." mentality for decades now, as technically speaking, the only real differences between the Playstations are minimal outside of technological specifications. The only _real_ change they made along the way was dual sticks, and it was all the way back in the PS1 era, and the only real changes otherwise have been the touch pad and haptic triggers, and those are still very underused. Microsoft is similar in this regard.

Nintendo meanwhile has never really been happy with following trends, with the one time they did so reflecting in poor sales figures. They like to _set_ the trends otherwise, as first they did with the Game and Watch and eventually the Game Boy and their line up of mobile systems, then the motion controls in full force with the Wii, both bandwagons which Sony jumped on eventually (to mixed results. Xbox only really jumped into the Wii bandwagon with the Kinect). I love the Gamecube and its gems, but it's still... jarring to see the reality of the situation.

Specs shouldn't matter, as the GC was as powerful as its competitors but sold abyssmally. Yet when Nintendo innovates and it lands (the Wii U being the exception ofc) everyone follows their trend, but then again Sony and Microsoft continue focusing only on graphics and stuff and yet their systems still sell.

It's wack.