Topic: Wii remotes for Gamecube?

I'm not saying this would have been a good business idea, as obviously the Wii turned out to be a massive success and earned a huge profit for Nintendo. I'm asking, would it have been feasible to instead of releasing the Wii at all, just to have made the Wii Remote a Gamecube controller? The hardware of the Gamecube and Wii weren't that different from one another, so I have no difficulty imagining that everything from Wii Sports to the Galaxy games could have existed just fine on the Gamecube. This would have changed the picture for the Wii U as well, as it seems Wii U is to Gamecube as PS3 is to PS2 just looking at the hardware and controllers. All of the titles for things would have made more sense as well. Gamecube U is much clearer as a new console than Wii U, but Gamecube sports may have been dismissed as shovelware had they not rebranded and packaged in the game and controller with the console. How would this have changed Nintendo's history and where do you think they would be today if the Wii had never existed?

Edit: Looking forward, I wonder about the PS4 and the Xbone. The hardware for these two consoles is at a point where any improvement is completely unnecessary. We could literally never see a PS5 because the PS4 is good enough. If they want to do something different, it may be more in their best interest to release a new controller or peripheral for the PS4 and forego making a PS5 altogether. The only downside to this is business practices in the past have determined that releasing a whole new device with the new controller packaged in is a good way to incentivise third parties to make games for that controller, but on the other hand with Sony and Microsoft taking a loss for each console sold and making that money back with games alone, it would be in their best interest to keep the expansive library they've built up and support the controller by releasing quality first party software. If the controller becomes popular enough, it may have it's own sub-consumer base that functions much like the consumer base of a console in determining whether it is a good decision for a developer to make a game for it.

Things would have been different. They did have Wii Remotes working on GameCube, I saw a video about Red Steel development and am too lazy to look it up where they had Wii Remotes working on a GameCube. In my opinion it would have changed everything. The Wii would have been a complete failure leaving absolutely no momentum going into the Wii U. It would have been a terrible idea and not as many games would have used the Wii Remotes on GameCube. One of the great this about having unique controllers being a consoles main controller is that (almost) every game uses the new unique features. This helps drive hardware and software sales. One of the problems with the Wii U is the fact that there are not unique games that use the GamePad well to drive sales. hopefully that will change next year.

Not that I don't think that would've been a good idea, but the Gamecube didn't have the hardware for that. It would require some kind of add-on. On top of that, the Wii's disk drive was designed to handle larger games, as the Wii discs had for more memory than the Gamecube ones. This would also have required an add-on similar to the 64DD. I think you can start to understand why DKCR on the Gamecube might not have worked, and even more why this idea might've ended in tears.

Not possible for two reasons.

First, although the hardware is similar,the hardware in the Wii is much better than in the GameCube. I can't imagine playing a game like Skyward Sword or Xenoblade Chronicles on the GameCube.

Second, the GameCube lacked the necessary firmware. The Wii at least had firmware that could be updated.

Of course, hindsight is 20/20, so these changes could've been made earlier, but considering that the GameCube pales in comparison to what the Wii did for Nintendo, I still think Nintendo should build off the Wii's success, not the GameCube's.

In other words, Nintendo would be a drastically different company if the Wii didn't exist and instead was an upgrade to the GameCube.

Which is pretty much what happened after 2010

Wii's success left more momentum rather than the Wii being a complete failure

Well, you are wrong there.

Technology is constantly advancing...at an astonishingly fast rate. The fact that the PS4 would never be able to play games in 4K is already a reason why a PS5 is inevitable.

The problem is that the components in the WiiMote would have been impossible to produce at that price in 2001. The IR camera and bluetooth module in particular. We're talking a 0.3MP webcam in 2001 for a good $100 and where that same sort of money in 2006 got you a 5MP point-and-click. Also a period between wired everything being the norm and wireless only just starting to become mainstream. So the WiiMotes could have, in theory, cost more than the Gamecube itself.

But that said, if the GameCube had been able to get it at a reasonable price then we probably would have seen the success of the "Wii" five years before it happened. If that had happened then without a doubt their next console would have launched later. We probably would have seen "Wii HD-ish" in 2008-ish. Both because the Wii was more capable than the Gamecube, so it would have aged earlier but also for the hardware to get the Gamecube online properly unless you want to add that cost to the 2001 price also. The fact that it would have launched later and with the added benefit of the tech probably would have meant that more of the third party stuff would have come on board.

............. but I would guess if that had happened we'd be sitting now with something less capable than the Wii U and without the GamePad. Not knowing what Nintendo's next move was and seeing third party support slowly fade as devs moved to the "next gen" systems. Probably looking down the barrel of something not unlike the Wii U this year.

But do enough people actually care about 4K for that leap to matter? The PS4 already doesn't support 3D much, and 3DTVs have been around for awhile now. Seems like if 4K doesn't get a large user base, which I don't think it will, that Sony wouldn't even bother making it a feature.

as i recall, the wii motes were most likely planned as a gamecube addon, as nintendo kept hinting about an awesome new thing for the gamecube. of course they smartened up and realized that it wouldn't have caught on at that point in time for a system that old and given its current state. adoption rate would've been low, and developers would not be as interested in utilizing an addon controller like that when only a small percentage of people would actually have it, and people wouldn't buy it because theres not enough content coming out.

so they made a brand new console that came with this brand new controller, making it the standard for the majority of games, and just look how well it caught on.

Was already a Gamecube with Wiimote anyway.

Calm down people is a joke. I'm just pulling your leg.