I also bought one and I certainly am not a Nintendo diehard... so, also no...

Yes it is true. Bruce Willis bought 14 million Wii U

I got it for the simple fact that currently, you can play every single mainline Zelda game with just a 3DS and a WiiU combo (save for Four Swords and Four Swords Adventures).

This of course changes when Breath of the Wild 2 drops however.

It’s why I bought it.

If you take away Wii Fit U and Xenoblade Chronicles X, for me it was another box to play Wii and VC games on about 90-95% of the time (I played A LOT of RPGs on it from both Wii and Wii U era VC). I dabbled in a few other games like Trine and Assassin’s Creed (both franchises I played on other platforms earlier), as well as the Mario and Luigi games, all of which I liked but didn’t play nearly as much as planned. Mario Kart 8 was perhaps 5-10 hours on Wii U for me, and in (what might be actually less time owning it) above 300 hours on Switch, largely because of the portability making for much higher access to local multiplayer.

I didnt buy one.

Who says kids can’t be diehard fans? I’d consider my kids to be much bigger diehard fans of Nintendo than I am. They’ll defend the crap that even I won’t =P

Well, obviously not "only" diehards if we're being totally literal, but I'd say a very large proportion of its buyers were Nintendo fans willing to overlook its problems cos it was the only console (at the time) where you could play games like Mario Kart 8.

And even some Nintendo fans sat it out by going with the 3DS instead.

It was never able to achieve any meaningful penetration of the mainstream market, something Switch has thankfully rectified by being a far better designed and marketed system with a much better software library.

The Wii U concept was dual screen asymmetrical gameplay and focused on “you” instead of “we.” - only one player got to play the main experience on the Gamepad.

It was a home console where you controlled games on the TV with a controller that features a screen: not only is this not what the Switch is, but the Switch is incapable of this feature.

The Switch is a hybrid between an HD Wii and a handheld bringing back the social element and creative styles of games that were somewhat lacking on Wii U. Back to an equal and more social focus, sleek hardware, and slick gameplay. Nintendo is clearly aiming to recapture that party-console magic the Wii had + portability, it’s in their advertisements.

Basically, like the Wii, the Switch uses joycons (upgrades of the Wii Remotes) and pro-controllers (upgrades of the classic controllers) while in console mode, and otherwise in handheld mode plays like a high end handheld (with a touch screen, though without the dual screen of the DS). But (as mentioned) lacks the Wii U style of controlling a game on the TV with a screen based controller.

Now they’re expanding into different form factors starting this year with a handheld version of the Switch platform. But they have yet to do anything that follows the Wii U concept of a screen-based controller for home console gameplay.

I think Switch has really begun to be mostly its own thing at this point. The hybrid/multi-form factor console.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx8evEINbpU

I did what every real Nintendo fan should do.

Buy last gens Mario Kart so you have something to play until the new one is released. Ie buy the console at the end of it's life alongside the next gen console.