7 points
I remember reading that Nintendo designed the SNES with a hump to help prevent people from setting food and drinks on it since the NES made a great table for things to spill on. Guess they gave up when they designed the Gamecube!
6 points
First design decision was probably to improve the design, second one was when they realized that the bad design made more money when people needed to replace consoles.
I was going to say maybe it’s because you can stack flat consoles and a lot of entertainment stands are easier to access the front from than the top, but you still had to access the top of the flat GCN.