This was a point in time they didnt need saving. The switch after the wii u was a saving grace, this isnt.
If I need to pin down Nintendo's darkest time period since the Famicom/NES I would pick up the GC/GBA era.
You may wonder why since the above chart clearly shows that Nintendo was always profitable during that era (even more profitable than the PlayStation division) whereas during the WiiU/3DS era Nintendo had three consecutive years in the red.
The reason is that money was never the biggest problem for Nintendo after Yamauchi managed to save the company from the banks' loans (with the Game & Watch) and struck gold with the Famicom/NES, the company simply kept accumulating money year after year and in the early 2000s had billions of dollars in the bank.
However at the beginning of the new century Nintendo, while filthy rich, was risking to become obsolete because their peculiar way to interpret the role of a platform holder (first-party driven) seemed to be uncompetitive compared to PlayStation business model (third-party driven).
They were under an existential threat and if they couldn't prove why Nintendo's peculiar hardware and software integration strategy could be attractive for consumers at large they could have been forced to migrate to greener pastures down the road (to tackle businesses other than consoles), before burning all the cash they had.
With DS and Wii, Nintendo doubled down on their approach based on provide unique values and that proved to be a hugely successful.
When Nintendo screwed up with 3DS and WiiU, they lost some money sure, yet their general strategy was never put in doubt.
In fact their next platform was revolutionary and catapulted Nintendo into their most profitable era yet.
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