Nintendo's proft during the Switch era surpasses the combined profit from 1981 to 2016

[Wman1996]

curl-6 said:

Switch is honestly closer to Wii/DS in terms of its DNA than it is to Wii U, N64, or Gamecube.

N64 and Gamecube are red ocean consoles, designed to directly fight competing consoles on equal footing for control of the existing pool of players. As for Wii U, that system was a fundamental misunderstanding of why Wii and DS succeeded, driven by the assumption that a novel gimmick was all that was needed, rather than seeing that Wii and DS won their generation by removing barriers to entry for new gamers.

The design philosophy behind the Switch is honestly probably closest to the NES and Gameboy; a rethink of what it means to be a console/handheld that provides a lean, no-frills launchpad for accessible gameplay experiences.

Also, the logic that Ring Fit and Switch Sports succeeded due to the pandemic doesn't water, because their sales continued to hold strong long after the lockdowns ended.

True, but they were red ocean consoles that screwed up the game delivery format. The failings of N64 and GameCube largely due to cartridges and miniDVD caused Nintendo to shift to a blue ocean strategy with Wii. 

Limitations on N64 and GameCube hurt Nintendo's revenue and potentially profits, any limitations on Switch seem to be helping. So many people buy digital nowadays, so the price of Switch cartridges to make and capping out at 32 GB isn't much of an issue. Nintendo will probably increase the max cartridge size of Switch 2 games to 64 GB, despite the fact that some third-party Switch 2 games will hit 100 GB or above. Digital distribution and updates are things that obviously were not really a thing during N64 and GameCube.