What game contributed the most to Switch's record breaking success

[Kyuu]

HoloDust said:

Kyuu said:

The Switch and MK8D would have been massively successful regardless of BotW. The Wii U failed because it was expensive, weak, stationary, had a relatively poor game library, and Nintendo was still supporting 3DS which was still getting all these Pokemon games among countless other titles.

BotW obviously contributed to its success, but not nearly as much as MK8D. MK8D by itself is also insignificant when compared to all the combined factors that made the console a huge success. Wii U wouldn't have sold tens of millions more units if BotW was released exclusively on it. Instead, the game would have failed to exceed 8 million copies sold, because the console was fundamentally poor and nothing could save it.

You could argue the same thing for MK8 - it sold ~8.5M on WiiU.

BotW (as much as I don't really like it as Zelda fan) as a launch title is exactly what Switch needed - open world romp for "Skyrim generation", that massively expands IP's audience and brings in lot of new fans (just like TES went from 9M to 60M with Skyrim).

But yeah, all combined factors lead to a perfect storm of sorts.

If BotW were released exclusively on the Wii U, and Nintendo continued to produce Wii U hardware, MK8 would have sold a lot more than 8.5 million copies. If MK8 was never ported to Switch, that would have also added several million copies sold. In the scenario a Wii U exclusive BotW sells 8 million, I'd guess a Wii U exclusive MK8 would sell over 16 million, and the hardware could exceed 30 million.

But of course Nintendo made the right call and reset everything with the Switch instead of trying to shove the Wii U down people's throats. At that time, most vocal core fans were pissed with many thinking Nintendo was done for lol.