Nintendo's best selling consoles are always the ones that almost perfect their concept, relative to the time (Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, DS, Wii) 

How in the world are you going to leave NES out of that list?!?!?

I got lazy

Plus, I didn't want to risk starting a whole debate around that. A lot of people act like the NES and SNES are the model of what Nintendo should be doing, making """normal""" hardware that is much more like the original standards that Nintendo created for the home console industry. I wouldn't separate them from that list, but I didn't want it to devolve into  "well actually, the SNES is more similar to the Playstation, and the Xbox 360 is more similar to the Playstation 2 than the Playstation 3 is, and .." that kind of stuff. 

I don't know why I keep hearing that the NES had "normal" hardware.  It had same processor as the Atari 2600.  Nintendo seems to do its best work when the hardware is underpowered.

Haha yeah, this thread was made right after Nintendo Switch's hardware launch price/game lineup reveal.

There was a lot of doubts in the air, I thought it would have a slow start and ramp up in year 2 once the library built up and then accelerated a ton with Pokemon.

How was I supposed to know it would sell more in the first 12 months than any video game system ever (besides the GBA's first 12 months)?


...I mean, it did only launch with 6 games and the library took a few months to expand in variety, but Zelda and Mario Kart did their magic hard and fast to keep demand sky high as people were paying $400+ to scalpers all the way until late July.

I said 80M LTD in this thread, but after E3 2017 we had a better idea of things to come, so I revised my prediction to 110M LTD, I haven't revised it since, but that  number can change quite a bit depending on what choices Nintendo makes with hardware revisions, long term first party support, third party collaborations, etc.

By the time and information of January 2020's quarterly results (more than a year out from now), things should be fairly clear on the general long term direction of the Nintendo Switch.

I don't know why I keep hearing that the NES had "normal" hardware.  It had same processor as the Atari 2600.  Nintendo seems to do its best work when the hardware is underpowered.

The NES was a lot more powerful than an Atari 2600

Versus

The Atari 7800 (a generation leap above the 2600) was comparable to the NES, but the 7800 never really took off. An Atari 2600 is to the NES what the NES is to the SNES, probably even more so because the types of games on the 2600 were so limited. 

The NES had a graphics chip.  However, it had the same processor as the Atari 2600.  The NES is notorious for flicker and slowdown because its processor was so weak.

That doesn't really absolve your earlier point because NES was still significantly more powerful than other consoles.