I don't know the financials, but Playstation had a very rocky start... it was a bit of a sleeper hit considering other consoles by electronics manufacturers that had failed spectacularly in the 1990s, it wasn't expected to win... until it did.
First off, it was losing to the more expensive Saturn. Second, early versions of it had a lot of difficulties with the disc tray skipping and ceasing to play the games after as little as 6 months. But despite selling a mere 4 million units in 1994 and 1995, 1996 saw a massive uptick in sales, over 9 million units, the system had really turned things around with popular games like Tomb Raider, Crash Bandicoot, Tekken 2, and Resident Evil. Then after the SNES generation finished and Nintendo was hit by a devastating software drought and fuzzy graphics, Playstation boasted 200 games, and showed off impressive CGI graphics in games like Resident Evil 2 and Final Fantasy 7, and went on to sell around 60 million units in 97, 98, and 99 effectively taking the crown that Nintendo had worn since the mid-1980s. And thanks to ongoing support, and the release of the new PS1 model, the Playstation went on to sell over 25 million more units in 2000 onward, which is when the Playstation 2 was the new hot system.
The 3DS is one of the most interesting cases of bad luck. The system itself was great, the features were excellent, but it also landed just after a massive anti-3D fear campaign started with sources reporting that 3D caused everything from eye damage to seizures and brain issues. So it might have been that the original price point was the correct one, but the unanticipated anti-3D backlash at the time really destroyed its chances. Nintendo followed through with the Ambassador program and the price cut, and significantly reversed the 3DS's terrible launch. It's hard to call the 3DS a sleeper hit though, as it was a system that was expected to sell better than it ended up doing, and sleeper hits are generally the opposite of that, low key release that weren't expected to be a very successful that turn out to be massive hits - some examples of this include Just Dance and Pokemon. A smaller example of a sleeper hit would be Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney, originally a port of a rather obscure and low selling Japanese GBA title, they shipped only about 60,000 units with no plans for more; but, a few months after release, word of mouth and internet humour drove up the demand for this, and it sold through the remaining unit quickly, and eBay prices skyrocketed; this led to more shipments and the franchise went on to sell 12 million units.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
