Yeah but reality tells a different story.

Wii did sell 100 million units. Where was all the magical developer support? They stayed with Sony + MS for the most part. Why? Because 160 million PS3s + 360s is more than 100 million Wiis. The only really "big" games the Wii maybe stole from the PS/XBox were Monster Hunter Tri and DQX (an online only game for Japan). 

Sorry but I just don't see much difference from developers if it sells 40 million versus 80 million. The Wii had mediocre third party support even at 100 million and with the PS4 + XB1 at almost 100 million shipped already there's just no way any studio could rationally justify supporting the Switch with a "big" game over those platforms. 

As Nintendo fans we've been sold this whole "well you better hope & stress about the system selling great becauze you need good sales for good developer support" ... but the fact is it's largely crap. 

The 3DS even has quite frankly somewhat assy third party support, it has 4-5 big Japanese IP sure, but it's real slim pickings after that. And that's at 65 million now. How much does it need to sell to get "good" developer support? 85 million? 100 million? 

Developers really can't devote too much resources to the Switch. There's too many PS4/XB1 owners already to ignore on top of the fact that there's PC users also and porting between those three platforms is easy (x86 PC GPU based basically). For portable games most developers, even Japanese ones, are chasing the mobile money train as their first priority these days. There's just no changing these two issues, and as such I don't think it really matters all that much if Switch sells 40-50 million say instead of 80-85 million. 

The games you get are largely going to be exactly the same as a gamer. The developers who are willing to buy in to what Nintendo is doing will be there at 30/40/50 million. The ones who aren't would only change their mind if it was an astronomical success like 100-150 million and even then they likely would "wait and see" for about 1-3 years, and then require another 1-2 years to finally release anything. It's not worth stressing over a a Nintendo fan, this whole cat & mouse sales game is largely bullshit. As long as the system does "ok" it's good enough, it doesn't really change much if goes above that. 

You need to build a certain userbase on your system for several publishers to develop for. The higher the userbase the more likely the game is being bought. That's kinda obvious.
Nintendo failed to deliver that with the WII U.
But that's not the only criteria. You system has to be also compatible with certain standards like game engine i.e. UE4. Make it easy for your developers to make games for your platform.

It matters to the people that want Nintendo to be more successful then PlayStation.

Also achieveing higher sales will always give the system more opportunities for additional content. A system that sells 100 million will have a much easier time getting more games then a system that sells 50 million.

What do we get if Nintendo is more "successful" than Playstation? A cookie? Not even that. 

Besides it's too far too late for that whole petty train of thought, I don't know if you noticed but the Playstation 4 is kinda already a huge success. 

I really actually don't buy that you'll have dramatically more support at 100 million than 50 million for a Nintendo system. Maybe if Nintendo was the only hardware provider versus say PC or something, but developers will always look at the Switch no matter how well it does and see that PS4 + XB1 + PC is a much larger user base and you can easily make one x86 version of a game there and port to all three. 

Switch is never going to win that pissing match. It's not like there's ever going to be some magical "dream" moment where the Switch does so well that Capcom decides Resident Evil VIII is now Switch exclusive or something. Things like that just aren't going to happen. At best Switch might get a version of a certain game, which will then be better on a different platform due to the spec difference, which to me quite frankly isn't worth losing sleep over. 

For some, an inner feeling of satisfcation and contentment that all is right in the world.

Even as a Nintendo fan while my heart says this would be great, my brain tells me it would be terrible. 

Nintendo is like that friend you have who's a cool dude, but maaaaaaan are they ever fucking annoying/crazy when they get drunk, they'll puke all over your carpet, hit on your girlfriend, and annoy all your other party guests. Nintendo can be awful when they are drunk on power. It may suck as a Nintendo fan to see Sony leading the industry, but quite frankly in a lot of ways they are the only hardware maker that isn't batshit crazy when given any whiff of power. In 20 years of largely wall to wall console dominance the only major mistake they've made is the $600 PS3 launch price, which was largely rectified by price cuts and solid refocusing on the PS3 for its last 4-5 years. 

Let's be honest, they're STILL drunk after the Wii.

Perhaps they've managed to condense there drunkeness to just the horrific January presentation and 1-2-Switch though.

That hillbilly is totally a serial killer isn't he. That woman needs to get out of there. 

....What?

How much the Switch sells is a key indicator in understanding whether Nintendo's business strategy and understanding of the gaming market is correct. With the Wii U, it wasn't. Therefore, if the Switch fails, then you'll see investors dump Nintendo shares which will either kill the company or force it to restructure its management and business strategy. 

So how much the Switch sells will be an indicator as to the direction Nintendo moves in the next few years. If you love Nintendo as they are today and the Switch has poor sales, that Nintendo will cease to exist in the near future. 

Except Switch is an actual portable game system. Which means Nintendo likely won't have much trouble selling at least 40-50 million of them, especially as time goes on as the price drops and more form factors are made available. 

If they can't even manage 40-50 million then obviously something very wrong has happened, but realistically they should be able to get to 40 and if they hit 40 it's too many users to not go ahead with a Switch 2 or whatever they want to make. 

So again, a lot of this stuff is much ado about nothing. 

Nintendo share holders will just have to content themselves with Nintendo making lots of money. Which they do every generation, even in periods where they have some hardware struggles. Nintendo makes lots of money, look at the last quarter, even with a half dead 3DS and a totally dead Wii U they pull a mini NES out of their ass and mobile profits to make more money than Sony's game division did for the same period. Nintendo has the whole making profit thing down to a science, as such quite frankly I don't really care if they sell 40-50 million or 80-90 million on that basis. It's not like I get any of that money.