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I remember quite well. But that was an actual expectation and other people legitimately expected it to perform sub 1 million as well, not just here. It's only just now that people are starting to fully shift from the "it's got no content" argument. This game has been plagued by revisionist history from day one essentially.  

Do you think Nintendo gets %100 of the sales price of their games?   No   they prob get about  $20-$30 of a $45-$60 game

If they decide to discount the game, then less-   If they include a game in a bundle w a console then less (maybe $0 depending on how they account for it)

By modern AAA standards all those games were very straightforward to make.  Nintendo have had a history of delaying games this gen when they weren't exactly technical or graphical power houses.  

I don't really believe this 2m figure but who knows.  For Zelda I'd definitely believe it though. 

Considering the state of the Yen and the cost of worldwide marketing, I would imagine that big budget Nintendo titles are going to have a very high profit threshold going forward.

With Zelda BoW in particular, I'd guess that it would need well over 2 million units sold.

if 'average' means when you add up all the Wii U games and the average comes to 2m to break even, that's still suspicious.  If Nintendo gets 20-30 bucks per copy sold, that still comes to a 40-60m budget per Wii U game on average.  That sounds even more rediculous when you consider that games like the Witcher 3 had a total cost of around 80m with development + marketing.  It makes me think that something was really lost in translation or the people at Nintendo are severely overpaid.

We can get a general idea of how long these games took by looking at the release schedule of these teams.

ND Cube was the developer of Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival, here is their software output dating back to 2010.

Wii Party-July 2010

Mario Party 9-March 2012

Wii Party U-October 2013

Mario Party: Island Tour-November 2013

Mario Party 10-March 2015

Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival-November 2015

Mario Party: Star Rush-November 2016

They basically pump out a party game once a year on average so nothing suggests that Amiibo Festival took a long time to develop.

Camelot Software Planning was the developer of Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash, here is their output dating back to 2007.

We Love Golf-December 2007

New Play Control: Mario Power Tennis-January 2009

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn-November 2010

Mario Tennis Open-May 2012

Mario Golf: World Tour-May 2014

Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash-November 2015

They have released a new game roughly every 1.5 years, give or take a few months. Again based on their output, there is no reason to believe Ultra Smash took significantly longer than any previous title.

What does Miyamoto know about the business side? Seems out of wack.

Nintendo spends $0.5B per year on marketing so even if their games are cheap to make, they spend a lot on advertising.

I see it as 2 million not being for the games themselves, but for Nintendo as a company.

To keep the company running their games would have to sell an average of 2 million.

Luckily they make money on hardware as well.  This is why they wont go third party.