I could be wrong but I believe that the reason why Gamecube screenshots looked so bad was because the only way for a screenshot to be taken (at least early on) was by using a TV capture card on your PC which were awful at the time ... The end result is the screenshots always looked like they were taken using a camera which had water on the lense.
I believe there were ways for both the press and developers to take better screenshots with the XBox and I believe there were ways with the PS2 aswell.







