by far my favorite console of all time since i first got it, i love pretty much everything on it. someone actually ported a game to the gamecube in the modern day (albeit it needs Swiss, a homebrew app to run) and it’s just so cool to see that it refuses to die
Excellent points. I was in middle school in the USA when the Gamecube released, and I remember there being a strong focus among my friends and myself about how powerful each console was and how they pushed graphics forward, especially with 3d models.
It seems that Nintendo wasn’t focused on this aspect with the Gamecube, and their sales likely suffered because of it. But as you said, we can look back now and see that they had long-term vision instead of chasing the current craze.
It’s interesting that Nintendo is in a similar boat with the Switch, but I feel that public perception of the importance of graphics has decreased so the Switch is able to thrive.
Contrary to what most people assume, the Gamecube was actually more powerful than the PS2 (the RE4 differences help illustrate this). The OG Xbox was overall the most powerful of that gen but even then the Gamecube had it beat in terms of memory speed iirc.