We'll except for Nintendo consoles pretty much yeah.When you are early adopter for any console, expect technical problems.
Correction, they were barely profitable at end of life. They are not exactly money maker, Gameboy family is.
And I have seen reports that GameCube was more profitable than ps2 (not including gba), only explanation for that is Nintendo knows how to make money in this business better than their competition.
Just as importantly, Nintendo has piles and piles of cash—over $5 billion in cash and about as much in short-term investments and bonds. Nintendo may not be as big a company as its primary rivals, Sony and Microsoft, but it is incredibly solvent. While Sony is being called on to split its entertainment and manufacturing divisions thanks to its struggles in the television space, and Microsoft is under a huge amount of pressure to spin off Xbox entirely, Nintendo faces no such dilemma.
Nintendo not only has the cash to weather a Wii U flop, the game maker also has a very clear long-term reason to stay in the hardware business: the future of their two major rivals, no matter how big those companies may be, remains uncertain, at least in regards to video games. What happens to the Xbox if Microsoft spins it off? And where would it be spun off to? What would a hedge fund do with the Xbox brand, and what sort of long-term support would the brand see absent Microsoft’s cash flow? What happens to PlayStation should Sony decide to take activist investor advice and split its divisions up?