One final thought, has anyone mentioned the 3DO system in this thread?  Another system that was DOA in my opinion, when I first saw it at the mall.

I think the Gamecube should have sold much better than it did. At least N64 numbers. So many great games, a very affordable price and a beast of a console for 2001.

Also, another vote for the Turbografx-16 (PC Engine). If it had only launched everywhere (and a year earlier in NA) and if NEC had kept the design of the console like it was in Japan and just added a second controller port, its success might have carried over to the rest of the world. Great library of games and the best CD-ROM titles on the market until the Saturn/Playstation.

Nintendo 64. It had so many great games, the possibility of 4 players multiplayer and the analogic stick on the control... It should defenitly have had the same sales numbers as the SNES or close to it

Wiiu

I'm going to toss my chips in two piles:
First would be the Sega Dreamcast.
Second would be the Playstation Vita.
On the Nintendo side, 3DS is probably the closest thing to an unsuccessful console I thought was actually very good.

That said, I had a big problem with the Dreamcast. The controller was painful/hand-crampy. That was, IMO, the worst generation for controllers by far, only the Playstation 2 had one that didn't cramp up my hands or feel awkward with its button sizes/positions/configurations. I have huge hands, I prefer controllers that don't try to conform to smaller hand sizes.

I'd say the N64 did the most brand damage of any Nintendo console, and it wasn't even close. It was around that time Nintendo gained the reputation of not having enough games, being too childish, and being way too expensive by using old fashioned media (cartridges). This was only exacerbated by the GC, which abandoned mostly every principle left of golden era Nintendo in order to become an inferior PS2 clone box, before Nintendo returned to form with the Wii. But Nintendo's improbable fall from dominance through most of the 80s and most of the 90s was the N64's doing.

The Wii U was more a poorly designed product (being both ugly to look at and sluggish to use) that was a stop-gap between the Wii and Switch. But I wouldn't say it damaged Nintendo's brand so much as it was a product by Nintendo that not many people wanted. I see the Wii U as something more like the Virtual Boy, a failure that didn't have much in the way of longterm impact on Nintendo other than temporary financial losses during its short run. But N64 actually did destroy Nintendo's reputation.

See every PlayStation controller for me sucked until DS4. Too tiny and cramped my hands. The Xbox S controller was the best of that gen.  Never had an issue with S controller but Hall effect analog has aged so well that no DC controller has drifted 25 years later. Tho I am now using a Retrofighters wireless. Gamecube however that controller was ASS outside of Smash. Tiny Dpad. Useless.

My brother had one of those; it was an insane piece of kit, the cartridges were almost as big as some consoles, and the graphics for a 4th gen system were so far ahead of the competition it was like if the Dreamcast had come out in 1996.

The cost though was astronomical, so it's not surprising it never sold much. It wasn't really a mass market product. Very cool system though.

Interesting obsrevation. As a N64 defender, it's unpleasent to read this, but it makes sense

I'm going to go with the WiiU. Despite all it's flaws and despite buying a console after the Switch just released, it still had some of the best games of all time... Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8, Smash, Mario U, Captain Toad and more.