Too bad that formula is complete dogshit, so an extremely good execution of it just means you have a game that's maybe kinda passable for a few hours until it gets boring and repetitive.
I'll bite. What do you think people are being overly forgiving to the Gamecube for?
Alright biter, here you go. Mario Sunshine is the worst of the big 3D Mario games, and would be little more than a "hidden gem" if it was, say, Activision's first Crash Bandicoot attempt. While a fine and fun game, Windwaker was also loaded with minor issues, the sailing wind issues, the Triforce hunt, the cut dungeon, that fucking tower dungeon with the statues you had to slowly move around. Star Fox Adventures was bad Zelda. The sale of Rare cut out many of the N64's top games from getting sequels. The Sonic games were all bad. The games that it "introduced" audiences to were all niche stuff like Luigi's Mansion, Pikmin, Animal Crossing (niche at the time), Paper Mario, etc. Good games but to this day the only title out of that lot to do truly big numbers is AC. And then all the fucking gimmick games. And, worst of all, the Playstation 2 just gave you so many more choices in games. While it might be fine to look back at the library now with all of the titles assembled together, it was another to watch most of them get delays, some for a year or more. While a great controller, their asinine decision to only included a right shoulder button has hobbled the design to this day, resulting in games back then having to remap that function from other buttons for PS2 ports or, if you are using it to play random Switch buttons (as I did for Okami, for instance,) then you have to give up on whatever it is that that button does entirely. Another thing Gamecube didn't have that Playstation did was online games and online multiplayer. Bear in mind, these were independently handled by the companies releasing games on PS2 but it was very much a thing and it was free. Given that these services are all shut down now, there's no remaining comparison to be had but it was definitely a thing back in the day (yes, I know GCN technically had it for Phantasy Star but when your library can quite literally be counted on one hand I don't give a damn about it.) Speaking of the PS2, the proverbial elephant in the room, it had a built in DVD player. I didn't think of that at the time but with the benefit of hindsight,if Nintendo had included one it would have been my family's DVD player instead of sitting on top of it.
Oh, and for all its dickriders, Mario Kart Double Dash was needlessly complex and took away from the simple joys of getting good and throwing turtles at people with its two racer gimmick, the first gimmick of many for that series- few of which added anything to it.
In terms of exclusives I find Xbox the weakest of that generation, even the short lived DC had a better library imo. I'm sure if I liked Halo I'd have a better opinion of it. It's still a decent console anyway.
A lot of Xbox's benefits were in getting better ports, a better online experience, Xbox Media Center (play MP3s on your tv!) and other things that have long since either been turned off or can be done a million better ways with 2025 technology. Its a real difference in the 2005 experience versus going back to the system in 2025 where the original online ecosystem is broken and whatever "graphical advancement" the titles had just looks like a different flavor of old. Oh yeah, also, you could take your Xbox and tv to a LAN party and hook it up to a shared network with up to 15 other people who brought their tvs and Xboxes to play 16 player Halo matches with a whole tv screen to yourself and no online lag. I've never did such a thing but from what I've heard it was lit. If you take PC out of the mix, which fair enough, PC and console were a lot more different back then, Xbox had a very nice library of games that were either exclusive or better on Xbox, including a lot of upgraded Dreamcast titles.
