Rumors of a portable Nintendo GameCube console, or at least a portable which plays GC disks, have been seen on gaming news sites for the last few days. The cause is that, apparently, Nintendo has got IBM to shrink their Broadway chip recently.
Now, I doubt these rumors are true, for several reasons. First, it would steal the thunder from their October / November Wii launch. Second, they already have a portable console which is selling like hot cakes - in fact, it’s currently the best selling console world wide, by far. Third, I don’t know if current technology allows a console with optical disks to have a decent battery duration, and yet be low cost - just ask Sony. Fourth, while the GC sold as much as the Xbox world wide, and made money for Nintendo, a lot of people still associate the name “GameCube” with failure, and with lost market share.
On the other hand, a portable GC would be interesting:
- Big software library, with many more games than the PSP, including a lot of classics
- GC games have very short load times, unlike the PSP
- The GC is much more powerful, graphics-wise, than the PSP (or even the PS2)
- Most Nintendo fans (like me) already have a relatively big collection of games, and would love to play them on the go
In conclusion? I doubt it’ll happen, but it would be nice. 
EDIT: of course, Nintendo wouldn’t call it “a portable GC”, since it would look old, and, as I said, the GC brand isn’t very popular. More like the “Game Boy Ultra”, which, whaddyaknow, is also compatible with GC games.
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