Will the Switch 2 have some secret sauce? If so, what?

[RolStoppable]

JWeinCom said:

But... whether their hand was forced or not, they released the DS and it was hugely successful. Even with the first real competition in the handheld market, it sold far better than the GBA did, and I think it is safe to say far better than a more powerful GBA would have in the GBA's place. Why would the lesson from all this be that Nintendo shouldn't try to innovate unless it is absolutely necessary?

If you have a monopoly over a type of product with a relatively fixed demand, that's one thing, and you can get away with not really trying. But, a monopoly in a luxury market is different. Especially when your monopoly is over a small subset of a luxury market. There is a large chunk of the audience that might simply say "meh" and drop out of the market. So, whether or not another major player can or will introduce a Switch competitor, Nintendo's sales can still vary by tens of millions depending on their hardware choices. 

Bolded: I don't think this is true at all.

As for the DS vs. a more powerful GBA, the main point of my previous post was that Nintendo needs a different value proposition when they are up against competitors who leverage other business divisions to subsidize their console hardware, i.e. sell it a significant loss to bolster their market shares. The DS was indeed a better choice than a more powerful GBA would have been, but that doesn't change that Switch's successor will not be in a similar situation as the GBA's successor has been. Now Nintendo already has a different value proposition which is hugely successful, that's why they don't need a major innovation.

The GBA was just a better GB and sold at a rapid pace, that's why I don't believe that the bolded portion of your post is true. The crucial part about Switch's successor won't have to be hardware choices, but rather software choices, because it has never come down to hardware choices alone for Nintendo. Their weaker selling systems weren't solely held back by their respective hardware, but also sequels to their popular IPs that weren't exactly what the market wanted, or sometimes even the refusal to make sequels altogether.

If Switch's successor is merely a better Switch all around at a fair price ($399 or less) with a solid launch lineup and first year software release schedule, then Nintendo will be fine and won't have to worry about selling less than 100m units of hardware. But if Nintendo pursues something unappealing, such as VR which has been suggested a few times in this thread, then it's very likely that we'll see a repeat of the 3DS where Nintendo will be quickly forced to sell the hardware at a loss in order to maintain confidence among their third party partners.

Switch's major standout feature on the hardware side is that you can keep playing the same game you just had on your TV completely hassle-free on the go. This has proven to be an incredibly valuable feature for men in a relationship, because it increased the amount of their playtime tremendously without pissing off their girlfriend/wife. This human behavior is not going to change, hence why there will remain strong demand for it.