so the vita is a console as well

The iPad or any number of Android tablets can do everything you described. I don't consider them home console. 

IMO it's a home console if it's actually competing in the home console market. This is really not. This is going to be largely something supported by 3DS and whatever is left of the Vita base, every aspect of its form factor/design is for portability (screen, LCD, tablet design, tablet GPU, tablet CPU, detachable controllers so you always have an extra controller on the road, kick stand so you can stand it up away from the TV, etc. etc. etc.). 

Nintendo would prefer to "brand" it as a "home console" for the time being because they still want people to buy 3DS this holiday season. I'm not even sure if this is Nintendo's global branding policy for the NX, because I think only NOA referred to it that way. 

I don't get how you guys can look at a tablet and not see a tablet. Its like you trained your eyes to not see whats in front of you. Ditch the controller nubs. Ditch the taco shell base. Just look at the base unit that is absolutely required. What do you see? A tablet.

All Nintendo did was make a tablet. Then tell you that its not a tablet.

lol, it's kinda of hilarious. I swear to some people if Nintendo made clothes they could say this:

Is a men's t-shirt and some people would say "yeah I guess it is, I mean it's just longer, but it's still a t-shirt that a man would wear". 

While tablets can offer features similar as Switch, they lack the software support to make them compelling. I mean the best reaons to do that with a tablet is probably emulation.

Wii U was a pretty traditional home console but it was not going head on with Sony and MS. Does that mean it wasn't a home console? No. Nintendo is looking for an audience Sony and MS aren't spending billions to fight for.

It was going head to head with Sony and MS. It just did a terrible job at doing that, lol. 

If Sony made this exact same product and it was called "Sony Switch" and there was no Playstation 4, I'm pretty sure a lot of people would say Sony is getting out of the traditional console business. Because they basically would be. 

This isn't even like the previous two Nintendo consoles where they were underpowered but had a new controller gimmick to basically "replace" the lack of power. This is a portable game machine with a plastic dock that lets it play on a TV, but every other design aspect is basically it being a portable. 

How can you not see that it's a home console with it's own screen?

If the processing power in the Wii-U base unit was magically transferred to the controller, would that make it 'just a tablet'?

People who saying its "terrible" and a "gimmick" were never going to buy it in the first place no matter how perfect it was.

Sony doesn't know how to make local multiplayer games. That's what really makes a console a home console.

LOL, the last video I watched of PSVR gameplay (Playroom VR, I think?) was purely local multiplayer. Sony don't know how to make em, tho.