I do wonder if a lot of the hate stemmed from the N64/PSone era. The Saturn flopped pretty hard, and the Dreamcast never really picked up traction - so there was a lot of Sega fans who may have adopted either a PS or N64. This meant that it was just Nintendo v Sony for a while, with PS being the more popular of the two and more known for it's "edgier" marketting etc. Then as more and more consumers came in with the PS2/Gamecube/XBOX era it was generally commonplace for people to bash the Gamecube as the kiddies console.

I miss the Gamecube era Super Smash Bros. Melee, Mario Party 4, Mario Tennis, Super Monkey Ball... oh what fun at sleep-overs we had. Then stuff like RE, RE0, Metroid Prime, Tales of Symphonia, Baton Kaitos. Plus it had the best version of Soul Calibur 2.

I guess they also kind of screwed themselves over by not picking up on the multimedia side of things either. Those tiny CDs, whereas PS2s and XBOXs could play DVDs, that was a pretty big things really to have an all-in-one multimedia machine back then, especially as the PC lull started a bit once the home console popularity started going up.