It has the entire portable market to itself while also having access to the home console market.

to be fair nothing changed

3ds also had the market for itself, the only challenge for Nintendo handhelds was the psp 

also everytime someone brings up pokemon baffles me

that game franchise was in all nintendo handhelds but people act like its an unprecedented

And nearly everyone who bought Mario Kart, Zelda, Mario Galaxy, Resident Evil 4, and any other game had one or two of those.

I missed Wii Fit, which is a casual game and a health game; and the first major application of its type (the biggest now being the fit bit thing) - but Wii Sports, Party, and Music are not; they’re social games.

Brain Age, Nintendogs, Candy Crush, and Wii Fit are all geared toward solo short term play, but on a daily basis over a long period of time; they’re one niche, and all in the genre of casual games.

Games like Wii Sports, Music, and Party are social games which are closer to Mario Kart, Rock band, Guitar Hero, Just Dance, and WarioWare as a market niche. You can call them party games. I also think this was the major selling point of the Wii, a party machine - casual was bigger on the DS and much bigger on mobile.

Basically, I am not trying to say that Wii is the same market as the PS3, there were a significant number of people falling into each market: my objection is calling the Wii primarily a casual or all its users casual gamers - the vast majority of them are into other games. Also, in case there’s some interpretation about Wii owners not being serious about gaming; I don’t think any console in history has had SO many nights with people camping out in front of stores to get one; it went all through the 06/07 winter, and Holiday seasons up to at least 09.

Wii Sports and Wii Fit drove a lot of the Wii's sales. Of course Nintendos staple games drove sales too, but the rapid rate of the Wii's sales came from many people who you could call 'casual'. I know that is an eye-rolling term, but I don't know what elese to call them, whatever. Let's not dwell on semantics.

Also, 0.5%? Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit, Wii Play all drove sales to a crowd that wouldn't normally buy a game console. Going by VGChartz this is a much bigger percentage of software sales than 0.5%, more like 15-20%.

Nintendo's staples like 2D Mario and Mario Kart also sold better true, but then why wouldn't they? They were often bundled with a console selling at a rapid rate. But my point is the rapid growth of the Wii over the GameCube didn't come from Mario Galaxy (which sold about as much as Mario 64 on a system with 3 times the sales), it came from the advent of motion controls and the innovative games that went along with it, particularly Wii Sports and Wii Fit. This shouldn't even be an argument.

Imagine the Wii was just a normal console upgrade without motion controls, with power like the PS3/360 directly competing in the same market demographic, and it released all the same Nintendo staples albeit better graphics, but the same game none the less. So no Wii Sports and the like. Do you think it would still sell like it did? The answer is unequivocally no.

No mainline Pokemon game has been developed for and at console level if someone has never been into portable gaming they'd never had played them it's a massive jump for the series.

0.5% of the brands you mentioned before. But I wouldn’t count Wii Sports Resort and Brain Age or Wii Fit as the same market at all. Yes, they both utilize motion controls, but so ok does Mario Galaxy and RE4 Wii. Motion controls are an interface input; and one that made party games extremely fun. You also can’t attribute Mario Kart and New Super Mario Bros Wii to bundles either since (for Mario Kart at least) that bundle didn’t launch until November 2010 after nearly 24 million copies had sold. Mario Kart does fall very much in line with the same niche as Wii Sports - both are geared toward local multiplayer/party gaming - not casual gaming; and that goes with Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Just Dance, Wario Wars, and others. These are a different niche than games like Candycrush Saga, Nintendogs, or Brain Age. Wii Fit was a big seller - but more for its health application - so it’s kind of the same appeal as the Fitbit - and it is a crossover casual game; a sub-genre I suppose since health games are all casual games too.

If you say party games and motion controls are the main draw of the Wii, I am with you, no argument. I only disagree with the casual gaming part (and I agreed with your first example list of Candycrush, Brain Age, and Nintendogs as being casual games).

Monster Hunter World proves you wrong, many people can be interested but not deem it worth buying a whole platform for the second MHW became available to a number of people it sold 7-8m. Pokemon is the same a console player may have an interest in it but not in portable platforms.

Thats really not the same thing at all.

Its not playing handheld games on a home console that people want, its a home console level Pokemon game that people want.

The GB/DS hardware lines were always like 2 generations behind home consoles of the time and while Switch isnt on par with PS4/XBO, it is a decent step up from PS3/360 and can produce console quality software.

Being able to play 8/16 bit handheld games on a TV in the late 90s/early 00s is just not comparable in any way.

im going to have to say no

I think it has a good chance, but I expect we'll see Switch's sales-pace fall behind Wii in the next two years.

A lot has changed since the Wii era, not least Nintendo themselves. Switch is the first system to benefit from Nintendo's internal reorganisation, the booming indie scene, and soon will be the only system Nintendo are focusing on. Scalable engines and a healthy appetite for ports will also benefit Switch - alongside a more regular supply of Nintendo games, there's a far broader array of quality software than any Nintendo system has enjoyed for a long time. Combined with the basic appeal and flexibility of the premise - not to mention the potential for hardware based expansions and experiments like Labo given Switch's modular nature - and Switch ultimately has more potential than any Nintendo hardware since DS.

I can see it doing more than 100 million over 6 years. Beyond that I'm not sure - it depends on whether Nintendo decide to support the system beyond the typical lifespan (as they are saying they will) and what kind of revisions we see and when. We might see a more smartphone like approach to revisions. By that I don't mean annual revisions, but say revisions every 3 years or so to boost the system's power, Nintendo could even - after two hardware revisions - phase out the 2017 model by making software from 2023 onwards compatible with the 2020/23 models (backwards compatible with all previous software, of course). The industry is changing rapidly and console generations are going to change, too.