[Taek]

The GameCube was released 24 years ago. Its hardly fair to hold Nintendo accountable to a direction they haven't moved in for two and a half decades.

The visual difference between the N64 and GC was enough that it made sense to focus on upgraded graphics. When you play an N64 game, there's always the initial shock of "wow these graphics are a bit dated".

But you don't get that feeling when playing Melee, or Wind Waker, or many of the other artfully done GC games.

Essentially, somewhere around the GameCube era, graphics became good enough that the right artist direction could leap a game into the "timeless graphics" category.

And so it makes sense that Nintendo said "let's stop chasing better graphics, and instead focus on art direction and gameplay".

[pimeys]

I think the biggest issue with Nintendo games until Switch at least has been the abysmal frame rates. We're not talking about dips just under 60fps, there are good examples of 15fps frame rates even with the best games such as Tears of Kingdom. I think they've finally fixed that issue with Switch 2, but the horrible performance of the games have been a huge issue since forever.

And of course it does not matter, Nintendo still sells because it's Mawio (and I say this with all the love, I'm a huge Mario fan myself).