Yeah, no. Hoping for 4m shipment is wishful thinking.

Tagged for Zelda impressiveness.

Not exactly, im in the same boat as you that thinks it wont get close to that but it's not wishful thinking. Wishful thinking is something like 6/7mil or more.

4Mil is possible, if nintendo plays there cards right with 2 or maybe 3 things i can see 4mil shipment.

1) Splatoon 2 especially its local multiplayer. This could potienally be a MH situation. Its yet to be determined however

2) rumored Pokemon Stars (system seller nuff said)

3)potienally a new Animal Crossing (i mean we are getting a new AC game in the next 2 months on mobile, i put money on it there will ve a switch game this year)

But Splatoon 2 is the only confirmed game that will have mass market Japanese appeal to push those types of numbers. Have to remember that Zelda and 3D Mario, while popular, are not usually million selling titles (Skyward Sword didn't even hit 400k). SMG and SM64 just barely push over 1 million.

and I think you misunderstand the appeal of multiplayer in MH if you think it's similar at all to Splatoon. 

Even if all of those games release in 2017 (which is hardly guaranteed considering Nintendo's history of delaying things), it'd still be a hard sell to think that 4m is a realistic goal.

I agree with you on mario and even zelda but zelda is a launch title so there is that (well not like its going to do a million)

Also pokemon is almost a yearly franchise skipping a game every 3/4 years and it just had its missing year (2015) unless it only comes out on 3ds.

As for splatoon 2 can you elaborate what you meant for me? What was the appeal for MH, i thought it was that many people connected locally and played in groups

Really? I think Zelda is gonna do 1 million easily. MM3D did 500k according to VGC, and BOTW has way more hype and is launching with the console, adding to its hype.

I think BOTW might push a million in Japan, but it'll get there by huge HW adoption.

Pokemon just had a huge, mainline release. I would think that the next game would just be that expansion which would be at most 3DS/Switch. That could potentially push a million, but I highly doubt that'd be out in 2017.

As far as Splatoon 2 vs Monster Hunter, it's do with the how you play. In Monster Hunter, people were forced to get together because there was no central online matchmaking. It became a cultural thing for hunting game that you got together with friends to play together. It's a lobby -> mission -> lobby -> mission type of gameplay, that is setup differently than how Splatoon's online worked. Splatoon operated much more like general FPS (with less interaction). I can only really answer that it takes playing MH locally and then playing Splatoon. I just feel like the design is too different to really have that appeal. 

Local multiplayer on that tiny of a screen sounds awful.

If RE can do 300k fw ill stop calling it a flop in Japan :P

And with that, Breath of the Wild has now matched Skyward Sword in points