Okay, follow me down the rabbit hole.
After the success of the Wii, Nintendo read the tea leaves and understood that the popularity of the Wii was waning. It was now 2011, 5 years after the wii, and Nintendo had just put out a release saying there was no new console. With ps4 and xbone imminent, Nintendo decided they were not ready, but instead of coming out right saying they had nothing due to the exorbitant expense of what the Switch was, decided to place an interim console, IE the Wii U.
Game production was as normal at Nintendo; mariokart, smash bros., star fox, mario maker, splatoon, they basically continued on like they were with their games. The only difference is that they didn't want to push the Wii U. They learned how to advertise from the Wii era, they knew that messaging was important. Does anyone not remember: "Wii would like to play"? Wii U was confusing, little advertisement was paid to the Wii U when Nintendo reportedly spent a billion dollars on advertisement for the Wii. Instead, the Wii U was treated by Nintendo as the redheaded step child no one wanted. The Wii U didn't get a sales slash, and as the years went by their messaging stayed confusing and in less than 5 years, the Wii U was dead at 13mill hardware.
Flashforward to 2017. BOTW was solely to be on the Wii U, but Nintendo didn't want to say it was actually being developed for the Switch. All the old games on Wii U migrated to Switch with great success overall with million seller after million seller. Ways before there was even word that Switch was over the horizon, Nintendo had already announced that their split division of the handheld and console development teams were combining to be 1 overall gaming developer. In 2016, Nintendo broke grounds to release 2 mobile games Mario Run and Pokemon Go, a thing most nintendo fans dreamed Nintendo would do.
This is what I'm saying. Nintendo had been in control since the near end of the Wii. Wii U was a stall tactic played to make Nintendo look incompetent when making their consoles. In reality, Nintendo laid this ruse in order to have their rabid fanbase think Wii U was the inheritor of the mantle of main Nintendo console as to keep Nintendo afloat financially in the 4 years of the Wii U lifetime. Non-Nintendo fans looked at Nintendo and said they didn't want the Wii U so to keep the production cost of making Wii U stay at a limited supply. The total of the Wii U production cost, along with the total unit sold kept Nintendo in the green, a balancing act that Nintendo perfected while keeping mum until the Switch dropped. And when it dropped, it was Hirosh...Nagas...it was a big success.
Oh yeah, Nintendo was in control. Haha, NSO expansion being 50 dollars, backlash, angry fans, down votes, more angry fans. Please. These crafty toymakers are playing you. They just dropped 881 million on game development. The early adopters are the same people who bought the Wii U(Tell me I'm wrong). NSO expansion in 4 years is another Switch.
