Last time I’ll respond to you since it seems you’re a Bethesda fanboy - or at least a very ardent defender.
I think you overestimate how many people actually install or care about mods. Many people just seems to like what Bethesda does.
Then why did Beth go out of their way to include mod support for consoles for Skyrim and Fallout 4, as well as announce mod support for console versions of Starfield? Plus people were clamoring for mods on console versions of their games even going back as far as Morrowind - but their games back then were more complete, so you are correct in that more people were okay with not having mods because at least the games were decent enough.
Oblivion was a smash hit on Xbox without mods. Since that the main sellers seems to be the console versions.
During 2006? Yeah, you’re correct - but interesting you’re bringing up Oblivion instead of Skyrim, Fallout 4, Fallout 76, and even Starfield. Y’know, the games that have been pretty devoid of any worthwhile vanilla content.