GameCube 2 Backwards Compatible?

With regards to controllers, BC is trivial ie they can easily allow you to use GCN controllers on GCN2.

 

The GBA Player is an add-on. They released a GB add-on for SNES too as I remember; doesn't really count.

 

Well it counts in as much as it discounts the reasons you gave for backwards compatability not happening with N5 (controller differences, price ect).

 

There's really not much in the way of controller differences between SNES in particular and GB; some of the buttons are in different colors, that's pretty much it. A bit more between GC and GBA, all that differs is there is no select button on the GC pad. No wonder, since the GB(A) has very few buttons to begin with.

Who knows though how the controller of the next generation of stationary consoles will look like, and how well it might map over to the GC layout. GC pad maps rather poorly to N64 layout after all.

So the GBA Player doesn't ACTUALLY discount anything of what I said...

 

Yeah it does. You say that controller differences could be an obstical, well the GBA controls are nothing like the GC controller. But that didn't stop Nintendo selling a GBA Player for GC and it didn't stop people buying it either. You say that the GC will be cheap when the N5 comes out (to be honest I don't even understand why you think that matters at all but anyway..) GBA was also cheap when GBA Player was released.

The only thing that it doesn't discount is wether Nintendo will spend the time or money to make it built in backwards compatibility with N5. That's a valid question.