Unlike its competitors, the system is solely focused on gaming and does not support DVD, CDs, or other optical media. Upon its release in 2001, the GameCube became Nintendo's first console to use optical discs, specifically a miniDVD-based format, as its primary storage medium instead of ROM cartridges. Nintendo publicly announced the console under the code name 'Project Dolphin' in a May 1999 press conference. Its earliest development began with the 1997 formation of ArtX, a computer graphics company later acquired by ATI, which would go on to produce the console's GPUs. As Nintendo's entry in the sixth generation of video game consoles, the GameCube competed with Sony's PlayStation 2 and Microsoft's original Xbox.
It is the successor to the Nintendo 64, which released in 1996, and predecessor of the Wii, which released in 2006. Nintendo GameCube is a home video game console developed and released by Nintendo in Japan on September 14, 2001, in North America on November 18, 2001, and in PAL territories in 2002.
