I think that extra power for the GameCube might be another reason why it gets more fondly remembered for that era.
It's the entire reason. Most people get hung up on the fact that the Gamecube was comparable to the competitors while Nintendo has been a generation behind since.
Maybe for some but I'm as a GameCube fan it took me a long time to even think of that point and only after doing some reflecting on that generation and being reminded of the performance difference in Resident Evil 4 for GameCube vs PS2.
The Switch on the other hand despite being a generation behind, was designed to handle the various game engines that most developers were using, so they could scale their games to run on the Switch much easier. So even before the Switch gained the massive sales it did, many third parties where able to have games ready for the system even if they didn't have much faith in it because it was easier to port games for it then they could back in the Gamecube era. And then when the Switch gained the massive sales it did, we started seeing ports of some of the more popular titles from the PS4 era because the hardware once again allowed for such a thing.
This is why when I've seen comments from some Gamecube fans saying the Gamecube was the last Nintendo system to have good third party support I have to roll my eyes so hard they literally fall out of my head. The Gamecube was still Nintendo designing hardware for their own developers without a thought to third parties. The Switch on the other hand was the first Nintendo system actually designed with third party support in mind and as a result, has by far the best third party support in Nintendo history.
I would have to disagree with you a little bit on this. I think you are misremembering the Switch's first year. Switch had a small launch line-up. Third party retail titles when it launched were Just Dance 2017, Skylanders: Imagination and Super Bomberman R. Third party retail titles from launch (Mar. 3) to end of June were The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+, Has Been Heroes, Fast RMX, Puyo Puyo Tetris, Rime, Disgaea 5 Complete, Redout, and Dragon Quest Heroes 1 & 2. That doesn't seem like a lot of third parties having their games ready for the console. It wasn't until the end of 2017 that you saw bigger name third party titles like DOOM, Skyrim, WWE 2K18, L.A. Noire and even Sonic Forces. I commented on it in the past but Bethesda actually releasing games on a Nintendo system really helped change the third party narrative with Nintendo systems. I do agree that Nintendo did seem to rethink their hardware design by making a system that would be much easier for third parties to port their games to but I also think that third parties still waited awhile to see how the Switch launch turned out before deciding if they would actually bother with the system or not. Nintendo really carried the Switch in that first year and the effort was noticed. I made a thread at the time that 2017 might be Nintendo's best year ever for quality software released. Nintendo carried that momentum of Breath of the Wild and kept the Switch selling so that there was no collapse of system sales after the launch window like the Wii U and 3DS experienced.
Even during the 2017 summer with Switch selling hot, third parties were reluctant about bringing software over. Famously, Cliff Bleszinski said he didn't think he could port the game Lawbreakers to the Switch because "I think the hardest part with the Switch is the controls. Look at the game that we have right now, and we just literally by the skin of our teeth put the entire game and the control pad that the PlayStation has. That means that we could probably make it work for the Xbox One in someway, right? But if you’re looking at the Switch the base controller that’s on the unit, it doesn’t have as many buttons." You'd see comments still of developers unsure about the Switch's ability to run their games that they were putting on PS4 and XBox One or saying that maybe if enough people ask them to on Twitter or something to show there is demand then maybe they'll think about porting something.
Again, Bethesda ended a lot of those excuses but I do wonder if they would have decided against releasing stuff if Switch had slowed down in sales. But by basically showing that it was duplicating Wii level sales, that seemed to get third parties to start taking the system more seriously and you began to see a result of that in 2018. That's when third parties started showing up which is good as Nintendo had to start looking at ports and other ways to fill in their software lineup as their development teams started anew after all their 2017 stuff. They had Smash Bros. which they used to keep up the hype and excitement. Yet it may have ended up being a bit beneficial as it did allow third party software to get more of a spotlight and perhaps get better sales than it might have had it released during the system's early launch. Even though they were old, previous Final Fantasy games getting ported to a Nintendo system in 2019 was another big signal that third parties might now be viewing the Switch different from past consoles. Yet, why couldn't Square have had ports of Final Fantasy VII or FFX ready for launch? Did it really need to take them two years to figure out how to port those games? Porting games may have been easier but it took awhile for third parties to actually take the Switch seriously and do it. Nintendo was further aided in the slow growth and momentum of the PS5 and XBox series X. With third parties releasing games that also had PS4 and XBox One versions to try because of the smaller userbases and expense of development for titles on those system in their first few years, it's kept the Switch as a key piece of the market for a longer time with its large userbase and hardware that they should know pretty well by now.
(And I didn't even get into the whole waste of time that is stuff like cloud versions of games like Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2. Square still pulling crap when it comes to bringing their games to the Switch. Or ports with issues so that they still run better on consoles three generations ago like the Metal Gear Solid collection. It's crap like that which can make third party support seem better on a console like GameCube because while it was a smaller quantity at least the quality was usually pretty good. Or at least, that's how it gets remembered now thanks to forgetting the bad and remembering the good that comes with nostalgia.)
Oh and Gamecube fans are complete fucking hypocrite when you praise games like Luigi's Mansion 1, Wind Waker, Paper Mario TTYD, but then turn your nose at the recently released Princess Peach Showtime. Quite a few of these highly praised Gamecube titles were incredible easy game, and yet the same people we now praise these games, say they have no interest in the recent Princess Peach Showtime because it looks too easy. Give me a fucking break.
Seriously, this is why I have no respect for opinions like this. This are the very definition of peak nostalgia blinding people. Seriously, if Princess Peach Showtime was released on the Gamecube 20 years ago, the same people who refuse to play it now because it's an easy looking game, would be praising it as a masterpiece like they do to many of these extremely easy Gamecube era games.
I don't know who these GameCube fans are that you keep encountering with those crap opinions. I will say that since Super Mario Wonder, Princess Peach: Showtime is the only Nintendo game that has been released or announced that I actually want to play and is the type of software that I wish they were releasing more of. I absolutely agree that it reminds me a bit of the GameCube era of trying to do something new with their IP in a sort of spinoff way like Luigi's Mansion or Wario World or Battalion Wars. It's rather annoying to me to see you speak of GameCube as having written off something like Princess Peach when I've never done that and makes it seem like you don't know what you are talking about or are just making things up when you label all such fans as one. Perhaps not your intention but it creates a disconnect for me when reading your posts with the phrasing that way.
It's Princess Peach that actually is why I agreed about having the same feeling of boredom that Dinar87 was expressing. Let's go with August 2023 as a starting point. When I think of the period from August 1, 2023 to July 31, 2024 and Nintendo developed software for the Switch that instantly appealed to me or stood out, I can only think of two titles which are Wonder and Showtime. That's a whole year in which Nintendo released just two games I'm excited to play for Switch. I had to look up to check what I might be forgetting as everything just seemed to be ports or remasters like Super Mario RPG. There was Detective Pikachu Returns and WarioWare: Move it!. Both are games I'll likely pick up when the price is right for me but they aren't big motivators to make me excited about the current state of Nintendo releases. I also wish I could just buy the Wii Another Code game that didn't get released in NA rather than both games but that's still a game that was made for Wii and not Switch. Now, if you want to say I'm being selective and if I moved back my timeline to include July 2023 which had Pikmin 4 then go ahead and shift the date so that there are now three top Switch games instead of two but I don't think it's great that a company like Nintendo can only put out about three fresh games in a year. Moreover, we still don't know how Nintendo is planning on padding out the rest of this year. If the rumours are true that the Switch 2 will be 2025 then Nintendo's could be very boring for over a year and a half. Save us, Professor Layton! I really need you now to give the Switch some life. It's not quite a Nintendo franchise but it feels like it sometimes.