Inspired by Curl-6's Nintendo most successful era thread, I thought about creating this one. Although the answer seems obvious, Wii U + 3DS, I would like to know if the GameCube+GBA era contends to this position. The Wii U + 3DS did led Nintendo to profit losses, but was Nintendo in better position regarding being present in the collective imagination if compared to GameCube era? At least Nintendo were coming from a recent sucessful era, the Wii + DS era, so it was still kinda fresh in people's mind. During GameCube era, Nintendo had just faced tough competition from Sony's PS1 and was facing the PS2, two juggernaut home console, meaning more time left aside by the mainstream public. I also feel like the PS2-GameCube era was the one in which the idea of "videogames must transcend from being a kid entertainment" hit its peak with Sony's consoles representing what a videogame should be: entertainment for teens and yound adults. So what do you think? A point for debate or a short-lived discussion?

I'd argue neither - Nintendo 64/GBC

Color was on the way to the Gameboy when the 64 released. Nintendo was riding high on the original Gameboy but didn't have anything "new" on the marker until the 64. I think having the Sony deal fall through, coming off the disaster of the CD-i and now for the next decade they watch the Playstation brand dominate the market. Not to mention Microsoft entering the fray and casually squeezing into second place, embarrassing Nintendo further as the Gamecube was a failure as well.

They lost third-party support and if it wasn't for the Gameboy Advance they were hanging by a thread in the, at the time, very niche gaming market. Thank goodness for Halo and Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty making the medium mainstream, three iconic franchises Nintendo had no hand in popularizing.

Imagine being an investor or management in Nintendo from 1994 until 2006 - it had to be nightmarish to watch your company be left in the dust so suddenly and so sharply after what you'd done for the gaming world.

Wii U and 3DS both sold less hardware than GameCube and GBA while also taking hardware losses at some point.
The only other era you could argue was on par or worse was GameCube+GBA, but again I already gave the reason why that isn't the case.
Digital distribution didn't exist for GameCube and GBA (or really anything at that time besides starting to slowly emerge on PC), so I suppose if someone can show me software profits you could make an argument that Wii U+3DS fared better than GameCube+GBA due to digital software sales that yield a higher profit for Nintendo.
N64+late GB/GBC was not an overly successful era either when compared to Switch or Wii+DS but Pokemon was a global phenomenon that carried that era massively. If Nintendo had no Pokemon and just coasted on Game Boy during that era without Game Boy Color, that would likely be the worst era because N64 had disappointing sales and the Game Boy would be dying.

It's gotta be the Wii U + 3DS in my view.

The 3DS wasn't a total loss, but it was a massive decline from the DS selling less than half as much lifetime, and it required an emergency price cut just to get off the grounded after a bungled launch. Wii U was just a disaster, one of the lowest selling major consoles ever, and sold just over a tenth of the Wii.

The Gamecube was a flop as well, but in that case the GBA was there to bail them out.

Really, this was Nintendo at their most arrogant.  Pitiful tech at a high price with no games at launch.  Just incredible.

Wii U era, no question about it.

I'm going to go against popular opinion and say Wii U era😁

In terms of the worst generation overall? Probably the 3DS + Wii U era. Lowest income vs expenditures, lowest hardware sales in decades, lowest software sales since the 90's, etc.

With all of that being said, I'd also like to point out a more ambiguous era during the mid-90's, roughly mid-1993 to late-1998. As late as 1992, the NES, Game Boy, and SNES were all big platforms that were moving millions of units of hardware and software per year. Over the next few years, the NES completely collapsed, the Game Boy didn't have a major refresh/successor for nearly a decade, the SNES started declining much faster than the NES did, the N64 got delayed, Nintendo wasted time on projects like the Virtual Boy and N64DD, etc.

There were major successes during this era, but often with a caveat. Pokemon was a big deal in Japan as early as 1996, but Nintendo took over 2 years to capitalize on it elsewhere. Wario was a breakout character, but as de facto successors to the Super Mario land series, they sold much less. Super Mario All-Stars was big in 1993, but was based on games from the last gen. The SNES did better than the Genesis late in the 4th gen, but software sales were dropping sharply for both platforms by this time. You had big 3rd party support from series like Street Fighter, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and so on, but much of this dried up during the N64 transition. And Super Mario 64 was one of the biggest games of all time, but only sold about half as well as Super Mario Bros 3 and World.

The last third of 1998 and 1999 marked a major transition back to success, Over the course of 16 months, we had the international release of Pokemon Red/Blue, the Game Boy Color launch, the Japanese Pokemon Gold/Silver, two more 5+ million sellers on the GBC (Pokemon Pinball and Super Mario Bros Deluxe), Ocarina of Time, the original Super Smash Bros, the original two Mario party games, more multi-million selling Pokemon games on the N64, strong 3rd party support from THQ, LucasArts, and Acclaim, and continued successes from Rare. That was a huge turnaround.

I would have to say the switch era in a way because it shows nintendo's prevlance on keeping the same console for way too long.

Well, that's one way to interpret the topic.

Keep in mind that the Wii U had a four and a half year "lifespan", and it's widely considered Nintendo's least successful console.