I mean there are tons of pretty thoughtful users who have explained the wii U failures time and time again, much better than what I could say but it came down to drought in games due to lack of third parties, an underwhelming peripheral (the tablet), bad marketing and a few others things I can't quite recall.

Up until the reveal, people were right to assume doom and gloom or very optimistic hype. Now we know what we're dealing it and a good size of the gaming community is split but hopeful.

Uhm, thread title is misleading, false assumptions will easily get you in the president's cabinet today. Just sayin.

And to me the bolded is the main concern right off the hop for the Switch.  A system launching with 7 games in the West, some digital only, is definitely a cause for concern to me.  Especially when their previous system went months without a large scale game release at a time.  As much as some want to believe they might, indie games and small scale titles don't move enough consoles.  They are great supplements to the larger scale AAA third party and first party releases.  

If they can keep up a great release schedule, and their E3 showing is loaded, my opinion might shift.  Until then though, I don't imagine the Switch is the next coming of the Wii the way some others (not necessarily you, quoted poster) do.

Works both ways, best not to assume that it would do well just because the 3DS did well

I'm usually a pessimist but I'm a bit optimistic the Switch will do well [enough]

Yeah, with the underwhelming showing of TP from EA at the reveal and just a nice picture with names to go off of, it's hard to make that initial invest on just promises of things to come. With Sony or MS, you know third party support is guaranteed to help out when exclusives may be in short supply. With Nintendo, it's very up-in-the-air. I would not blame a consumer wanting to hold on the Switch for a bit longer, at least until E3, to make that decision, specially if one isn't a die-hard zelda fan.

The Switch has a good chance of being more successful than the Wii U but I do not see it reaching Wii level of sales.

Why? switch is advertised as a console. It makes perfect sense to compare it with other consoles. If portability is never an issue for console gamers, whyd you think they give a sht abt switch size?

The whole complains abt switch, it all comes down to one question: Who is Nintendo trying to sell NS to? and NO, EVERYONE IS NOT AN ANSWER

The fact that they are so focused on the motion controls tells me that they are hoping that same fad will garner the Wii level sales again.  I seriously doubt that the audience gets captivated by that same thing twice.  I do see the Switch doing much better than the Wii U did as well, mainly because it can appeal to both handheld and console gamers to some extent.  Third party support has been a ghost town for Nintendo, comparatively at least, for a long time.  That is going to take Switch success to build and unfortunately, it may take great third party support to create Switch success.  A bit of a catch 22.

Edit: Also, kinda sad that all the good conversation about this topic is without the TC, who remains unable to create his rebuttal apparently.

you should probably read the whole sentance, instead of just the first half

Also, a bit related, you should read my full response to maybe realize im hiding a joke inside a fake response?
Tho, this has happened to me often, I guess i need to stop understimating how serious people are in this forum. 

This is such a weird misconception, this is a sales website where the data is easily accessible yet people constantly throw out innacurate statements about sales.

3DS has sold over 40 million units outside of Japan (roughly 4x the amount Wii U has), Japan makes up slightly over 1/3 of 3DS worldwide sales yet people constantly claim Japan is the only region that cares about handhelds.

Its just such a backwards statement to say Switch will sell like Wii U outside of Japan because handhelds arent a selling point yet Nintendo's current handheld has sold far better than Wii U in each and every region.