From a combined 250 million sold units with the Wii/DS shrunk to barely 80 million with WiiU/3DS.

Will Switch really be a success with only 80 million lifetime sales, if it reaches that number at all, knowing it's the only Nintendo platform going forward? 80 million wouldn't have been a growth but stagnation over last gen.

Nah, Turkish and others here have made it clear that it's fine to just mush all the numbers together. A mere 150 million PS4 sales would represent stagnation for Sony's install base since last gen.

when you factor in the overlap of people who purchase both a handheld & home console each generation and now only need to buy a single device than yes 80 million is a good number.

regardless i dont consider something a success based solely on hardware numbers things like software sales & profit have to be taken into account as well. if Nintendo sells 80 million units of Switch over the course of 5-6 years, sells a few hundred million units of 1st party software, a few hundred million units of 3rd party software and makes the company a few billion dollars in profit than yes it would undeniably be a success.

Let's just consider that SW sales and profits are proportional to HW sales. 80M is what Nintendo made last gen while crying in agony. How's that going to be a success this gen?

Don't take me wrong. I believe (because NS can overlap clients from 2 shrinking markets) that 80M is ok. But to call it a success? No way.

Maybe because they see NS as a "mushed" concept. If NS is the successor of both the WiiU and 3DS it's just natural to sum home console + handheld sales on each generation.

PS4 was not the successor of both PS3 and PSP. Your comparison makes no sense.

As for the "Sony's stagnation" that's just false. Who did you see here calling stagnation if NS sells 250M (Wii + DS sales)?

So NES, SNES, Saturn and XBOX360 were all failures according to this logic lol. 

Now that Nintendo fans don't need to buy two seperate systems anymore they have more money left to buy games. The Switch will see a big increase in software sales. 

I literally used Turkish's own words. I never referred to the 250 million so I don't know where you got that.

Bolded is inherently flawed logic. No, it is not natural to combine sales of two different platforms in this context.

The discussion is about "install base," yes? But "Nintendo install base" combining Wii U and 3DS sales is nonsense. It's as meaningless as "Sony install base" combining PS4 and Vita sales. Install base measures the size of the potential customer pool for software sales. Two distinct systems with different development processes and software libraries have no business being mushed together into one "install base" pool. Hell, the install base of a single platform is only indirectly related to its total hardware sales, since systems like the 3DS have multiple models and people often buy a second or third one. 3 console sales to the same person does not represent 3 separate customers.

Put into a simple example, Wii sold 100 million and Mario Galaxy sold over 10 million. 3DS sold 65 million and 3D Land sold over 10 million. Wii U sold 13 million and 3D World struggled to sell 5 million even with bundles. Odyssey is only one game, it didn't cost twice as much to make just because the platform is now a hybrid. The benefit is that the team who makes it can then make a second game for the same flourishing platform instead of having to support a failing platform that has no hope of producing a sales success.

But according to your sig as recently as a few weeks ago you predicted 20 million sales for the Switch over 3 years so I can see why you would bend over backwards to move those goalposts.

Regarding my sig, I still believe it will be only 20M for the simple reason that I'm not expecting NS to replace 3DS. All my reasoning in this tread has been assuming the opposite and in that sense 80M won't represent a success. If Nintendo launches a new handheld soon and NS sells 80M anyway, then I will consider it a clear success.