u/AmchadAcela

The Gamecube consistently had sales that underperformed compared to the Playstation 2. Even before the Gamecube, the Nintendo 64 heavily underperformed compared to the Playstation. But during this time Nintendo’s handheld console business continued to boom. At the time, I think Nintendo focusing on handheld consoles only would have probably been a logical conclusion considering how poorly the Gamecube and Nintendo 64 sold. Developing games for a handheld console was significantly cheaper and popular games sold in massive quantities in the millions. I still think Nintendo would have done something similar to the DS in this timeline but they might have waited until Christmas of 2005 to release a more polished handheld console with a stronger launch library. I think the major unknown is how would have smart phones impacted a handheld console only Nintendo. Would have Nintendo developed a handheld console smartphone device to directly compete with Apple and Samsung? The massive success of the Switch outselling the Wii and the Switch 2 looking to be another successful console potentially gives us a glimpse of what a handheld only Nintendo may have been like back in the mid 2000s through the release of the Switch.