The GameCube was salvagable though if you changed a few minor things (like the freaking purple Fisher Price design, added in an option for DVD playback) and launched a year earlier with some better planning, I think it would have been a large success. It wouldn't have beat the PS2, but it likely would have topped the N64 fairly easily and caused the XBox to be dead on arrivial. 

Wii U though, probably would have flopped as the Wii craze itself showed strong signs of fading out by about 2011 anyway. 

There was a black GC that released somewhere around year 2. Nothing could really be done about coming out a year earlier, but yet again, the hardware was much better than PS2. As far as better planning, not really sure what you mean by that.

It wasn't "much better", it was reasonably better, but not hugely better. By planning I mean they should have prepared for a 2000 launch instead. Giving Sony a full year headstart and a whopping 18 months in Japan was stupid. 

Should have launched in November 2000 with Perfect Dark and Zelda: Majora's Mask as launch titles (which would have required planning). Both of those games barely ran on the N64 (Perfect Dark anyway). 

They would have sold 50 million or so that gen had they done that. 

The brother-in-law of a friend of my third cousin that cleans loos at Ninty says they are digging up some tens millions Virtual Boys from their secret lanfills and refurbishing them.
This will cost little, thanks to underage slave workforce, but it will take time, they won't be ready before 2017.

^^

LOL