It would've helped, I think they would've sold more in the 30-40 million range instead of 22 million. 

Gifting Sony 18 freaking months of lead time was never going to be a good idea and it gave Micrcosoft all the time in the world to get their act together too. 

If they had launched a year earlier they probably would have had to have used some late gen N64 projects to launch the machine with, so I think the market perception would've been considerably different if Zelda: Majora's Mask, Perfect Dark, Sin & Punishment, and Conker's Bad Fur Day are your launch titles and then you also grab Resident Evil exclusivity on top of that.

Majora's Mask still features a kid Link, but would've been seen more as a direct sequel to Ocarina of Time and then Nintendo would've also have been free to experiment more with Wind Waker and take their time on that game. 

GameCube would've gotten more attention too for something of the good things they actually did that gen. The GameCube was flat out a better chipset than the PS2, producing nicer graphics, and far easy to program for. Problem is XBox showed up with the same advantages and kinda stole their thunder. 

Nintendo parroted that line and Rogue Squadron looked great, but then MS showed up the same week and said "well hey our system is easy to program for too and has even more RAM and look we got Halo" ... and that pretty much took a lot of sizzle off Nintendo's steak. 

The gamecube had a bad preliminary market perception because first and foremost consumers were turned off by the design. They thought it was created for children. When I bought it I used to call it the lunchbox. Back when I got it I was still in grade school, I had no idea about the marketing aspects just yet. Gamecube was a fail there on a design level.

The GC era was Nintendos least creative and least inspired. It was desperation. Pikmin was one of the best things to come out of it.

Nintendo is lucky they had the name that they did because the gamecube thrived on name value. They still profited on it.

Whoa..whoa..wait...are you posing a theory that if the Gamecube came out before the PS2 that it would've done better? Nintendo screwed the pooch with third parties yeaaaaars before that. They lost the third parties around the N64 era and were pissing them off around the SNES era, but they couldn't flee because they were dependent on Nintendo's marketshare.

The Wii U is going to have really bad third party support in the coming years compared to how they are already having it now. The third party support is mostly coming as they are reliant on the fact that Sony and Microsoft's current gen consoles are getting games. They aren't even getting most of the current gen ones. They will be reliant on first party and third party, which will most likely cap them at thirty million consoles. If theres few third party titles there will be less gamers depending on Nintendo for their third party games (which the exodus started two gens earlier) which cuts down their installed base by half or more. This gen will be relatively short so I think Nintendo will sell twenty-five million and at the highest about thirty.

The Wii U is serving essentially the same portion of the Nintendo market that Nintendo served during both of their losing generations with the N64 and the GC.

The design was problematic, but by the same token NOA at least offered the black version of the GameCube which was at least a decent alternative and the silver one was actually quite nice. Not the smartest design Nintendo's ever made of course (one they would correct with the sleek, chic design of the Wii). 

Gimme Zelda: Majora's Mask and Perfect Dark to launch the thing with (neither ran worth a damn on the N64 anyway without the RAM expansion), maybe bump the price to $250 or so but bump the RAM to double (furthering the hardware gap) and give me a 8-12 month headstart over MS and I could sell that thing. Maybe not to the same level as the PS2, but a nice, very comfortable no.2 finish with a sizable userbase. 

Nintendo was also utterly baffling in not marketing Resident Evil exclusivity at all, lol. They should have been shouting it from the rooftops, that was a monster coup on their part. REMake looked incredible too, so did Star Wars. 

It's just a bunch of silly decisions that did them in. Once they went with the cell shaded Zelda approach, I think they pretty much wrote the poor systems obituary. 

Not to sound like a dick about it, but how old were you when the PS2 launched? The buzz was relentess and I don't think the premise of a new competitor with a very uncertain future, or a lunchbox (from the perspective of the masses) would've done much to derail it. It's arguable that Sony won the generation just by calling the system "Playstation 2".

It would've helped, I think they would've sold more in the 30-40 million range instead of 22 million. 

Gifting Sony 18 freaking months of lead time was never going to be a good idea and it gave Micrcosoft all the time in the world to get their act together too. 

If they had launched a year earlier they probably would have had to have used some late gen N64 projects to launch the machine with, so I think the market perception would've been considerably different if Zelda: Majora's Mask, Perfect Dark, Sin & Punishment, and Conker's Bad Fur Day are your launch titles and then you also grab Resident Evil exclusivity on top of that.

Majora's Mask still features a kid Link, but would've been seen more as a direct sequel to Ocarina of Time and then Nintendo would've also have been free to experiment more with Wind Waker and take their time on that game. 

GameCube would've gotten more attention too for something of the good things they actually did that gen. The GameCube was flat out a better chipset than the PS2, producing nicer graphics, and far easy to program for. Problem is XBox showed up with the same advantages and kinda stole their thunder. 

Nintendo parroted that line and Rogue Squadron looked great, but then MS showed up the same week and said "well hey our system is easy to program for too and has even more RAM and look we got Halo" ... and that pretty much took a lot of sizzle off Nintendo's steak.