Where is the Wii's marketshare? You know the one that is driving the potential of gaming because the PS/360 marketshare is declining? Both the Wii and the Wii U have analogs of HDD, semantically flash memory != disk memory, but you're just grasping here. You keep trying to prove absolutes when you are conflicting with the very defnitions of the terms you are using. Backwards Compatibility is an influence, indisputable. What does a the difference in philosophy b/w Wii and GC have to do with the specs of the system? The mere fact that the GC exists and the Wii is backwards compatible with it is an influence.

Clearly, you fail to understand the difference between an option and a mandate. It doesn't matter if the consumer mainstream didn't buy a Xbox. The 360 didn't have WW 2nd place. The manufacturers all adopted the industry standard. That is why its standard.

There you go the difference is a lot bigger not bad for the new kid on the block with no established franchises and only slightly better 3rd party support.

It would have had more then a year more if they would have gotten someone else besides NVIDIA to make the GPU.  Also despite being a failure in your book it had the best selling exclusive game in the US despite being the new kid on the block without a track record.

Also its a bit unfair to compare the sales of two well established franchises to a new IP and the second Halo 2 could have done a bit better if it wasn't also available on the PC and the first one could have sold a bit better also even though it didn't get a PC release until two years after it launched on the X-Box.

Its rather surprising that Sega lasted as long as console manufacturer as they did since Nintendo completly dominated them during the 3rd generation the only regions where the SMS did somewhat decent is in territories where Nintendo didn't bother to launch or only partially launched the NES.

Alot bigger? 

Thru the end of 2005 the gap between Xbox/GC was 3.78 in America

Lifetime the gap between Xbox/GC was 3.22 in America

That extra 2 years is an irrelevant argument.

It would have sold a lot more consoles its best selling game Halo 2 launched less then a year before it ended its production run in August of 2005.

Stop making excuses, it would have done better if.......

Speculating on how things would have been in different scenarios is fun but it doesnt change the fact that Gamecube and Xbox were almost equal in pretty much every aspect, hardware/software/tie ratio/best sellers. They were both fighting for an extremely distant 2nd place. Now u could say it was a moral victory for Microsoft to be able to beat Nintendo in its first attempt but thats irrelevant to this discussion. The fact remains that there was no duopoly in the 6th gen, PS2 dominated each and every region with an iron first while Xbox/Gamecube fought hard to stay relevant.

The original X-box was more then relevant in the US/North America just have a look at the sales numbers of Halo 2 it still the best selling first party exclusive in that region and one of the biggest games of the decade in both sales, popularity, critical acclaim and historical significance.  Also historically speaking the only console that truely domintated North America was the NES with over 90% of the home console market share and total control of all third party publishers not only could they dictate what games to make for that console, they also controlled how many copies could be made since they where in total control of all the cartrige manufacturing. 

Stop making excuses, it would have done better if.......

Speculating on how things would have been in different scenarios is fun but it doesnt change the fact that Gamecube and Xbox were almost equal in pretty much every aspect, hardware/software/tie ratio/best sellers. They were both fighting for an extremely distant 2nd place. Now u could say it was a moral victory for Microsoft to be able to beat Nintendo in its first attempt but thats irrelevant to this discussion. The fact remains that there was no duopoly in the 6th gen, PS2 dominated each and every region with an iron first while Xbox/Gamecube fought hard to stay relevant.