The expectations for what Nintendo games sell have been skewed by the ridiculous sales of a bunch of Wii and DS games. The gamecube and N64 didn't have have any 10-million sellers other than Mario 64. Handhelds also didn't have many games that sold that much other than Pokemon, the GBA didn't have any other than Pokemon. Then along came the Wii and DS and all of a sudden NSMB is selling 30 million on both systems, Mario Kart sells nearly 60 million combined on both systems. New IPs like Brain Age and Nintendogs sell around 20 million. This was when we started to see games like Prime 3 be called failures for selling 1.5 million when Galaxy 1 sold over 12 million when that would have been considered a big success in previous generations.
Things seemed a little different in the Wii U and 3DS days though. With the Wii U there weren't that many systems sold, so there was an upper limit on what games could sell that was clear to everyone. And while the 3DS had plenty of 10 million sellers, Fire Emblem Awakening was considered a big success despite selling around 2 million.
I guess in the Switch era since both hardware and software sales are high again like in the Wii/DS days - with Zelda selling more than it ever has before in particular, expectations have reset to those from that era as well.
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