Edit: you know what never mind 

IF the Gamecube was the most powerful system, which is nonsense, why were the following games not released on it or the PS2:

• Doom 3
• Half-Life 2
• Riddick
• FarCry Instincts
• Enclave

And please tell me why SC CT looked so bad on GCN compared to Xbox

One could equally ask why Rogue Squadron 2 & 3 weren't on Xbox.

I'll answer your question. All Gamecube ports of Splinter Cell were ports of the PS2 version done by Ubisoft Shanghai. That's true of most 3rd party games for Gamecube. Developers would downport the game to PS2 then use middleware to quickly port the PS2 version to GC. In some cases the GC version would be worse than the PS2 version. While the PS2 and Xbox versions of the game were optimized for their respective platforms, the GC version was not.

In the rare cases that a game was developed for the GC first, the game either ran worse on Xbox and poorly on PS2. In some cases the ports were cancelled ala RS2 and RS3. Sonic Heroes was developed on the Gamecube and ported to Xbox and PS2. The GC version looked the best and ran at a constant 60fps. The Xbox version's frame rate flunctuated between 30 to 60fps and had some slow down. The PS2 version couldn't keep a constant 30fps, looked worse, and had terrible pop in.  RE4 on PS2 had half the polygon count of the GC version, worse texture quality, dumbed down AI, and all of the real time lighting effects were removed.

You are confusing hardware capability with software effort. The PS2 was the dominant platform and as such developers put their best foot forward on the systems software. There are multiple instances of the PS2 version of a multiplatform game being the best despite having the weakest hardware. Microsoft's use of money hats, Splinter Cell is an example of this, resulted games being optimized for the platform despite it's meager market share. The Gamecube had a similarly meager market share as the Xbox but Nintendo didn't dole out the financial incentives that MS did. Most Nintendo's deals had third parties developing existing Nintendo IPs. F-Zero GX being developed by AM2 for example. Tales of Symphonia and the Capcom "5" were the only real "exclusives" Nintendo secured. ToS was later ported to PS2. The Capcom "5" turned out to be the Capcom 3 and two of the three were ported to PS2.  Out of the three only RE4 was a big budget title that pushed the hardware.

The lack of 3rd party effort on GC ultimately hampered the Wii as well. Developers were simply ignorant of the platforms capability. I remember when Lucasarts said the WIi couldn't perform bump mapping and shader effects. The irony was that their launch game for Gamecube, Rogue Squadron 2, made use of both.

Because Nintendo paid a shitload of money to LucasArts to get exclusive distribution rights for 5 years. They signed this in 1998, the games were released in 2002 and 2003.

That is why the talk of the developers of these titles at that time is useless anyway. What dou you expect them to say? "Yeah we signed this deal with Nintendo, but the Xbox version would be way better!"?!

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Nintendo,+LucasArts+Announce+Limited+Exclusive+Star+Wars+Deal+for...-a053162962

For the same reason that God of War, Front Mission, Fantasy X and XII, Jak and Daxter, Breat of Fire V, Steambot Chronicles weren't released on the Xbox1 and GC.

And why P.N.03, Eternal Darkness, Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, Sonic Adventure DX, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, Skies of Arcadia Legends, Twin Snakes weren't on the Xbox1 and PS2.

The Doom 3 dev confirmed that the GC would have had no issue running Doom 3 power wise. It just didn't have enough storage capacity.

SC on the GC was a PS2 port like most multi-platofrm games on the GC. Haven't you read anything in ithis thread? Only a handful of 3rd party games actually used the more advanced graphical capabilities of the GC and those game could not be reproduced on the Xbox1 without downgrade.

not sure why some of you are arguing but it was well known fact xbox was strongest console last gen

developers & anandtech claim XBOX is the superior console last gen

Let me say this once again today: The Xbox is still the most powerful game machine on the planet. Not only is this the greatest compliment that a software engineer can give to a piece of hardware, it is also a reflection of our appreciation of the Xbox for allowing us to run DOA3, DOAX, and now Ninja Gaiden with the quality that we, Team Ninja, hoped for.

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/ninjagaiden/preview_6070870.html

My first thoughts were, what can we do with this game on Xbox that the other consoles couldn`t? So we focused on an increased number of polygons, multitexturing, and designs to exploit the hardware.

http://www.xbnmag.com/article2/0,4364,1268951,00.asp

The number of textures, visual effects and polygons we throw onto the screen would bring any other console to its knees. We really made the most of what the Xbox offers a game developer.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/news/news_story.php?id=96717

The hard drive for streaming, pixel shaders for some effects, and the raw power. It would not fit on a PlayStation and would change beyond recognition to fit the GameCube. It's not that we've been inefficient either; we're just asking a lot of the hardware, and the Xbox is the only one that can deliver.

http://www.xbox.com/en-us/polygon/20031027-2.htm

Both the GameCube and Xbox are clearly superior to the PS2 in terms of the quality of the graphics seen in games available today. The transition from PS2 to GameCube and/or Xbox is a fairly large leap, but going between GameCube and Xbox is a bit less dramatic.

http://anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.html?i=1566&p=14

So the Doom 3 dev said the game was not possible on GC. Thanks for clearing things up.

Th Xbox never had a game that pushed as many polygons and effects at once as Rogue Squadron 3.