Remember when the Wii U was aiming for the "core gamer"?

[Soundwave]

There's no way you could really look at the Wii U and say it was aimed a hardcore gamers.

The "Wii" brand itself at that time was associated with like soccer moms and casual players (see The Inbetweeners episode where they are ragging on the Wii as a the mom's choice console).

It had Call of Duty on it ... but COD was already on XBox 360 and PS3 for years so that really didn't sway anyone's opinion.

Switch is "cool" and a core gamer device that is a very high end for a portable tablet like device (especially for 2017), it's more like N64 honestly in terms of "cool factor", the N64 still had some "cool" factor to it because of things like GoldenEye, Turok, Wave Race, 1080, Kobe Bryant NBA, Ken Griffey MLB, wrestling games, and even things like Mario 64 and Zelda: OoT were big, epic revolutionary games so they were accepted by hardcore gamers.

With the GameCube, Nintendo lost the FPS shooter crown and the kiddie design of the console hurt them, making Zelda look like a kid's cartoon (a big difference is the modern Zelda games look like an anime ... but anime is cool or at least acceptable).

Then Wii was kind of cool in a party/social gaming sense for a few years, but I think by about 2009/2010 it became stigmatized about being something formulaic and goofy for grandpas and moms and that carried over to the Wii U which was just lamer and marketed even worse.

The Switch I'd honestly argue is the first "cool" console that Nintendo has made since the N64. Look at it, the main grey/black model they used in the marketing looks like something Nolan Batman movies or The Matrix films. It has an epic, bad ass Zelda which cribs from Skyrim and games like that as the signature software title. The commercials are generally cool and not embarrassing cringe and they look professional and on par with the commercials Sony or MS make. They're also not trying be too hard to be cool which just ends up being the opposite of cool (the GameCube suffered from this, the launch commercials were trying too hard and not being funny/down to earth enough). 

Nintendo's never going to really be full "cool" because they still have to have their family-centric appeal and they're likely not going to make many violent games like God Of War and Last of Us (well there is Bayonetta), but there are nuances to that and the Switch definitely is an edgier console than the overly kiddy/casual Wii U.