What if the GameCube was slightly more powerful than it was, the controller was like Wii's, it had Wii Sports and the mature Zelda that everyone wanted (Twilight Princess) at launch, and eventually had the entire first party Wii library instead of GameCube's? They would obviously win profit-wise since they did during 6th gen (GBA) and if you combined the sales of the GBA and the GameCube/Wii then they would have won the gen, since I think this would be very successful. What do you think?

Motion controls were pretty new back in 2001. Combined with the increased power, it would definately cost significantly more than the PS2 or Xbox. Factor in the fact that 3rd parties likely still wouldn't port over a lot of games in a timely matter, and there's no reason to think it would be that much more sucessful than the GameCube.

Plus, you can't simply say "what if a mature Zelda popped out of nowhere?" The only way they'd have something like that for the 2001 launch is if they made Majora's Mask a launch title or something like that. That would have hurt Nintendo during 2000.

Quick question, is hypothetical 6th gen Wii's hardware the same than real 7th gen Wii's?

Edit: Like, use of DVD and same specs

They were competing in completely different environments. (PS2 and Wii) I think that the PS2 would have sold a lot less, but would have still been on top. The Wii would have been a decent second and the Xbox would have sold just as much. The PS2 would still have sold because of the DVD player and the Wii would have sold well to a market that didn't want any video game console originally. I'd say:

PS2: 120m
Wii: 100m
XB: 20m

Then we'll go with that Twilight Princess came out when Wind Waker was supposed to come out. 

Hypothetical 6th gen Wii hardware is the exact same as real 7th gen Wii's hardware.

I'm kind of a believer that these types of ideas are partly a byproduct of timing ... that's to say the timing has to be right.

In the early 2000s, 3D graphics were still a new thing relatively and people were still getting "high" off that buzz.

But by 2005-2006 things started to shift and the audience developed a hunger for wanting to get back to simpler gaming and more accessibility.

It wasn't just the Wii that did that, you could see it coming with Guitar Hero also.

Today, I think people have gotten sick of all the casual ware we got flooded with for 5 years and the pendulum is swinging back towards consoles being more of core experiences.

So many damn "what if" threads.

Anyway, I don't think motion controls would have been that great in 2001 and the Wii wouldn't have been able to exist then. The Wii came at the right time. I guess it could have doubled sales?

Why would it need to be more powerful? It was already more powerful than the PS2.... if it used standard size DVDs that might have helped, though.

Well, if motion controls were ZOMGWTF on 2006 imagine what they would've been around early 2000's. There are two possibilities IMO:

Either the Wii triumphed flawlessly and PS brand would've lost at least considerable power and market share since Third-parties would've developed more games for the succesful and innovative most-powerful console. Resident Evil 4 would've stayed as an exclusive forever.

...Or it would've failed miserably because of the price of the controllers and console itself (Considering it's more powerful than Xbox and thus a bit more expensive), also TP devs find it difficult to develop a game with Wiimote and Nunchuk in mind, since it's very different from Xbox and PS2, mainly because of the lack of a second stick to move the camera in any third-person game.