A few people need to eat some crow I think.

..This is also why I try to never make assertions on something that we know nothing about.
Opinions are like assholes, everyone has them. - Facts and data is much harder to argue against.

Well did you play the Wii?? It was super fun to play with motion controls. Wii Sports alone probably brought in tens of millions of users. It had insane word of mouth, literally everyone was trying to get their hands on a Wii and having nonstop Wii Sports parties once they did.

Sooo many nights playing Wii Sports and other Wii games with family and friends. It seemed like pretty much everyone I knew, gamers and non-gamers alike, had a Wii and were playing Wii Sports in groups all the time the first couple years it was out. I think Mario Kart Double Dash is probably the only game this century that I've played more than Wii Sports. Wii Sports was the next huge multiplayer craze after the GoldenEye craze and the Halo/Halo2 craze from the previous two gens, except that it was accessible and fun for EVERYONE, not only gamers, so had a much larger audience.

To say the games 'looked like crap and played even worse than crap' entirely misses the idea of games being just pure fun to play!

Not hard to see why it was so popular. Only problem was the non-gamers who bought it only stuck to the more casual games and eventually their excitement faded so sales collapsed rather suddenly after like 3 incredible years, while the forced motion controls on standard games that were just 'waggle' controls instead of buttons didn't really improve those game experiences so that fun and excitement of motion control focused games didn't really add anything to most standard controlled games. And some of Nintendo's biggest IP had off-games that gen like Zelda, Smash, and Mario Kart were all considered to be weaker outings.

I think the Wii brought gamers back to their childhoods when gaming was new and exciting and just pure fun with a totally new experience. Nothing the past 18+ years since Wii came out has captured that sort of excitement in the gaming industry. Maybe BotW in just the total freedom for exploration and doing whatever you want that it provided.

Anyway, this thread is funny, people thinking the Switch was gonna do terrible and that Nintendo was basically doomed just cuz WiiU did poorly haha. I don't remember exactly what my thoughts on the Switch were before it came out, but it was clear to me it was an exciting new concept and was smart that they were combining their console and portable divisions and would at least be decently popular, though I doubt I would have predicted it would sell as well as the Wii. While the WiiU from the moment I first heard of it just seemed confusing and awkward so it was obvious it was going to outsell the WiiU several times over at least.

I think it could definitely happen. Whether it will depends more on the library than anything else.

I was never a social gamer. Gaming for me is a solo experience, mostly. playing with friends and family has no appeal to me

The controls were too awkward, I like a fixed joystick, or maybe mouse and keyboard. Motion controls were terrible, and no game made good use of it

And Wii was technically my childhood, I was like 10 years old when it came out. Guess I didn't get the memo I was supposed to have fun pretending to play tennis lol 

I'm surprised I didn't post on this thread back then. I remember laughing at this kind of numbers back then. I made a thread about Nintendo being better by going third party like Xbox is doing now because of how bad I think it would fall, and their games would enjoy being available to a bigger audience (the bigger audience, but on the Switch itself, did made their games sales explode indeed).

I definitely felt the Switch announcement was bad and $300 was far too much, so I expected 50M tops when it was done.

The Switch was the only time I got one those there wrong since I joined this site. But it was WAY wrong.

I still think my reaction was the logical one, massive decline from Wii to Wii U and DS to 3DS, PS4 doing really well, I didn't see the Switch being successful being only $100 less than it, while Nintendo was into this big downward trend.

You can see even some Nintendo fans just hoping it could reach 3DS sales levels, not 100M much less 160M.

I was right though. Just turned out being optimistic was the right thing to be.

Nothing cooler than being able to play FPS games on the couch with the Wiimote's IR (mouse) and the nunchuck controller (keyboard).
That was Wii's highlight for me. Many great titles used it wonderfully such as Metroid Prime 3, Pikmin, Trauma Centre, Zack&Wiki to name a few.

Similar aspect came from the DS, stylus controls brought some great gameplay with it.

Glad these threads are getting revived given how since April 2nd we've been seeing revisionist perspectives about how the original Switch didn't have the same negative response as we are seeing with Switch 2 surrounding pricing, value, etc.

Having said that, I don't think anybody could have predicted it would be as successful as it was. A safe guess would've been 3DS + Wii U. Something like 80-100 million sales at the time.

There were a lot of assumptions that no longer hold.

1. The idea that Nintendo drops support for their platforms after 5 years. If anything, the Switch 2 has been overdue. They learned their lesson with Wii -> Wii U and DS -> 3DS. My coworkers in 2021 were itching for a Switch 2 when the OLED was announced. 2000's/early 2010'a Nintendo might've released one then. 

2. The idea that Nintendo's core base was saturated and they could no longer appeal to those outside of it. Switch appealed to adult gaming enthusiasts by successfully achieving what the Vita promised, home consoles experiences on the go.

3. The idea that Nintendo staved off its inevitable decline with the casual wave of the Wii/DS and now that the fad burst they are back on-track for decline. 

Really, what I think we should take from this is that many of our assumptions about what Nintendo was as a company were based on a recency bias at the time. Companies can evolve their strategy and tactics as the market and technology that fuels it changes.

wow lol this is insane. Unanimous consensus that Wii numbers were absurdly optimistic…just for it to go on and reach PS2 levels.

This is a thread from early 2017 :P
Its talking about the 1st Switch.... thats currently at 150m+ units.