This was definitely peak hardware design. They even compromised the storage medium and system performance to achieve exactly the form they wanted.
Nowadays a console is shaped like a giant fucking water trap from Dune and sounds like a jet engine, and yet still can’t even make games look as good as they did 10-15 years ago.
They didn’t need to compromise. They could have used standard DVD, but they instead designed a whole new format that would be harder to copy. The inner disc tray is recessed to only fit mini-DVD sized discs when it could easily have been made wider and taken full-sized discs.
This was definitely peak hardware design. They even compromised the storage medium and system performance to achieve exactly the form they wanted.
Nowadays a console is shaped like a giant fucking water trap from Dune and sounds like a jet engine, and yet still can’t even make games look as good as they did 10-15 years ago.
They didn’t need to compromise. They could have used standard DVD, but they instead designed a whole new format that would be harder to copy. The inner disc tray is recessed to only fit mini-DVD sized discs when it could easily have been made wider and taken full-sized discs.
The silly part is the GameCube is actually the most powerful console of that generation. The limited storage medium is actually what kneecapped it.