No, the GC was profitable. The hardware was occasionally sold for a minor loss, but Nintendo pushed out plenty of million sellers which easily made up for it. On top of this there were controllers and memory cards which had high profit margins. Since the GC had many good multiplayer games and since memory cards were mandatory, Nintendo sold a good amount of accessories.

People tend to overestimate Nintendo's profits from handhelds. A lot of people would probably tell you that the DS generated more profits than the Wii, but that's not the case. DS hardware clearly outpaced Wii hardware, but there isn't much of a difference in software sales. Games for home consoles sell for a higher price and thus have a higher profit margin per copy. And there are of course sales of accessories, something that barely exists for handheld gaming. The Wii got the DS beat in terms of profit.

I own a vita and I love it.  I wanted a game gear.. Shoot I wanted lynx.  I'm all for competition and if I can afford it I will play on all sides.  But I'm sensing that this is the last time we will see a dedicated portable video game system go up against Nintendo. If you haven't figured out Nintendos strategy you probably are blinded by hate or something.   It's a master strategy.   Yet no competitor has attempted to use the same strategy against them.  Could someone rise to the challenge again someday?  Or is this it.. With all these smart devices taking up market space it seems companies are tepid about developing handhelds.   Sony will need to save its treasures for a long time to seriously come at Nintendo again.  

Its obvious I don't consider vita a threat to the throne.  I wish I could be optimistic but I have been checking the web for upcoming games for a year now and it's been very disappointing.   So what do you think... Will Vita be profitable enough to warrant a third psp?  What other companies would dare step in the arena?  Is Nintendo the now and future king?

Dont you mean 4th PsP? I hope you dont forget the disasterous PspGo

The PSPGO was a remodel, not a new system. Also going by that logic you would mean the 7th PSP, since there were also the PSP 2000, PSP 3000, and PSP E1000

Well it was a PsP that couldnt even play Psp games outside of the downloadables. But i thought it was supposed to be an entirely new system. It didnt use disks, it used chips like what the Vita and 3ds use.