Wman1996 said:
I got one shortly after Mario Kart 8 launched. I thought a turnaround was still possible but didn't think it could outsell SNES for instance. It took me until around early 2015 after Smash launched and Mario Kart 8 had been out for months to realize it probably wouldn't even outsell GameCube. And it obviously fell quite short even of GameCube. I was pessimistic with Switch after that, thinking there was a chance it might only outsell NES. |
I still think the ultimate idea was pretty cool.
I think (and who really knows what they were thinking at this point) that the idea of the Wii U was to kind of create an experience where people with different skill levels could have fun. Nintendo Land is a great example of that. Most of the multiplayer games give one player a very complex role while the others take on simpler tasks. For instance in the Metroid Prime minigame where the ship player needs to be very familiar with dual stick controls whereas the other players can be less experienced but still compete with pointer controls. Conversely, in something like NSMBU, a less experienced player (i.e. a kid or nongaming gf/bf) can enjoy the experience while the more experienced gamer is doing heavier lifting.
As someone who is pretty good at games but likes playing with people who are less so, that idea had merit. And I was kind of excited about something that I thought would make it easier to share my favorite hobby with the filthy casuals.
Then there was the initial drought of games which was concerning. But really I started to think "uh-oh" when the first E3 happened. I believe their game lineup (at least the main ones) were Windwaker HD, Tropical Freeze, Mario 3D World, and Mario Kart 8. And while I love all of those games, none of them made use of the gamepad in any really meaningful way. It was clear there was no killer app that was coming along to show why the hardware was exciting or essential.
For the Switch I was a little pessimistic, because tbh I didn't think being able to play your system wherever was something a ton of people wanted. But, at least you could see early on that it had a decent library of games. BOTW at launch, Odyssey year one, Splatoon 2, etc. I didn't think it would flop because of that, but I definitely didn't see it hitting 100 million. I dunno if I ever actually opined on it, but I think I would have said like 50-75 million if I had been pushed.
