I don't think Rocket League would be as persuasive as Skyrim or FIFA, but I still think if that sells really well it would be seen as a good sign. Every third party game that does well is one more hole in the "only Nintendo games sell on Nintendo platforms" wall.

Every bit helps, but generally speaking I think most third parties will grant that kid/family-centric/popular third party IP like LEGO, Just Dance (at least it used to), Sonic, Minecraft, sell well on Nintendo systems. 

But really ever since probably the GameCube era it seems like Nintendo has had little/no luck with genres like shooters/main line action-adventure titles/sports games ... if Skyrim or FIFA sell well ... then Switch is really in uncharted territory for a post-1990s Nintendo system in a lot of ways. 

Call of Duty, Resident Evil, and the Goldeneye remake did fairly well on Wii, crossing the million mark regularly.

One of the COD games sold over 1 million on Wii, it wasn't a regular occurance as I recall. RE did OK but the sales of that declined. I don't think GoldenEye actually hit a million. Monster Hunter did though. 

Granted on Wii everything was skewed because the system had such an overwhelming amount of shovelware type games being the leading third party sellers. When something like Carnival Games out sells every other third party title that kinda sends the wrong message to developers. 

Switch is from marketing a much more conventional game system, Wii was really an outlier even by Nintendo's own standards. On no other Nintendo system would something like "Game Party" or the Just Dance games be the top selling third party software. 

COD3, Modern Warfare, World at War, and Black Ops all passed a million on Wii. Goldeneye landed at 1.8 million.

Heck, if this is as good as it appears, I might have to get it! I'll get the PC version first though, much prefer the 360 controller and performance boost of the rig.

I would probably take some of those numbers with a grain of salt. VGChartz is the source I assume? They are wrong on a lot of stuff. If GoldenEye sold almost 2 million copies I'd have to think Activision would've fast tracked some kind of sequel or at least renewed the rights to the Bond license a few years later. 

They did; fast tracked it a bit too much actually; that sequel was 007 Legends, which was apparently awful due to being rushed out the door.

And COD evidently sold well enough on Wii that Activision kept releasing them year after year. That's the kind of sustainable support Switch could really use.

I'm just saying generally speaking companies don't dump a license like that with a recent success like that. 

VGChartz as much as I like the community, their sales tracking IMO is fairly dubious. It's a site basically run by fans, and while that's admirable, how really would they get detailed sales information "for free"? The vast majority of numbers here are basically guesses, there is no retailer that would give a non-industry website detailed sales tracking information up in that fashion (it's part of the reason why NPD can charge for their service). 

I'm sure the COD games sold well enough to warrant sequels. Again with Wii though I think that whole system is just an outlier. Any third party success a port like RE4 would have for example would be undermined by the perception of it being a "casual system", and that was what developers focused the majority of their content on Wii on. 

Switch is not neccessarily tied to that legacy as such if something like FIFA or Skyrim does well on it, developers are going to probably take notice of that in a different way. Switch is not neccessarily bound to the "yeah it's only selling because it's cashing in on casuals" stigma attached to it which is a large differentiator. 

Again, they didn't; they fast tracked a sequel which subsequently flopped, after that they dumped it. Eurocom even said in an interview they were pleased with the sales of Goldeneye on Wii.

And if COD wasn't successful on Wii, Activision wouldn't have kept bringing them over year after year.