Just looked into something:
*Rounding
NES 62 million
SNES 49 million (21% decline)
N64 33 million (33% decline)
GameCube 22 million (33% decline)
Wii 102 million (467% increase)
Wii U 14 million (86% decline)
Switch 100+ million (714% increase and growing)
GBA 82 million
DS 155 million (189% increase)
3DS 76 million (51% decline)
Switch 100+ million (142%+ increase)
*Not counting GB/GBC because they are tracked together even though GBC had Superior specs and hundreds of exclusive games that took advantage of the power.
What I noticed about this is Nintendo has two naming conventions. One is using part of the name of previous console, such as the "N" for "Nintendo" located within NES, SNES, or Wii in Wii U. These systems, compared to their predecessor (so all but NES) had on average a 47% decline gen over gen. The other naming convention, where the names are unique, has the systems GameCube, Wii, and Switch. These systems averaged a 383% increase gen over gen, and that will keep increasing as Switch sells more.
On the handheld side, the DS and Switch have a average 166% increase whereas the 3ds, which inherits the name ds, saw a decrease of 51%.
In conclusion, names matter. More than anything else, honestly, because consumers aren't very aware. If Nintendo has learned their lesson, the next device won't have the word Switch in it at all and will be unique sounding and unique visually.
