The Wii has its potential chopped off at the end. Nintendo could have kept support going a lot longer than it did, but effectively ended the Wii generation after 2010, but didn’t release the Wii U until 2012. 2011 basically had Zelda and Kirby; Xenoblade may have had its western release in 2011, but development finished a year prior. Zelda was late due to developmental difficulties. Proper support for the console had ended in the previous year and sales dropped off like a rock.
Had Nintendo continued supporting the Wii properly, and had released a Wii HD for higher tier versions of software as well as higher end third party games, then the Wii would have done A LOT better than it did - the Wii U was a misstep, half baked, and shoehorned in with the “asymmetric gameplay” thing that they marketed as a the next big idea to justify the one gamepad.
The Wii still has the highest selling year of any home console in history, and third highest selling year overall (only the DS is ahead). The interesting part of Switch’s fiscal 2009, with those 24M+ numbers, is that it had been supply constrained nearly the full year - it could have outsold the DS that year as the December in the following year is the highest selling December of any gaming console ever, including handhelds. Fiscal 2011 was still over 15 million, but by fiscal 2013 sales had dropped to under 4 million (still better than the Wii U’s best year though).
To answer the question:
If Nintendo buggers Switch up like the Wii U, then Switch will sell less due to it not having the same magnitude of heat the Wii had in 2006 to 2010. If Nintendo does what they should do, support Switch properly with dual versions of software during the transition - or even iterate on the hardware (more like their handhelds, or iOS and Android) instead of a massive generational hardware and platform shift, then it would be difficult to see Nintendo selling below 100M. The Switch is a new type of device and is attracting a new type of crowdehile bringing back much of the former Wii crowd that they had lost with the Wii U.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
