This is the real problem. How many people here actually make attempt to play something out of your comfort zone? Stop waiting for name brands and take this opportunity to try something new.

I greatly recommended Ace of Seafood

I just find it funny when people say there is nothing to play while having such a narrow criteria. No indies, no ports/remasters, no multiplayer games, no niche Japanese games, no casual titles, no multiplats, no E rated titles, no classic games, no cartoony games, no arcade-y games, no games under 80 metacritic.

Hum.... And? Does "most talked about" means "Everyone agrees that it's the best"? No, it doesn't. Otherwise your "study" would mean that everyone agrees that Watch Dogs 2 is like 5 times better than Pokemon Sun and Moon. Sure.

And what about the fact that the study is based only on the duration of E3? Because, right now, you can see that the God of War trailer from E3 2016 has 19.6M views on Youtube with 352K likes, while the Zelda trailer from the same E3 has 13.6M views with 208K likes (for further comparison, the E3 Mario trailer has 28.9M views). So even with the out-of-topic analysis of "which game had the most impact on social media", Zelda doesn't win.  But like I said, even if it did, it wouldn't be a proof of "Everyone agrees that Nintendo won E3", because there is no relation between the two statements.

And as usual, I think that a lot of Nintendo fans are overestimating Smash. It's a big game with a very hardcore fanbase, sure. But even on the 3DS, it's "only" at 8M sales. The best selling game of the franchise is barely at 13M on the Wii. It's nowhere close to a Mario or Mario Kart with 36M for example. So it will sell very well, obviously, but it won't make this year bigger than a Mario, Mario Kart, Splatoon 2 or new generation Zelda year IMO. Pokemon could, if they handle the changes well and don't disappoint the fanbase.

They dropped the ball by not having a true botw expansion pack - new areas with new characters etc. would keep a lot of people happy for a long time.

Essentially this. Even in the Wii's heyday, it wasn't like Nintendo was getting SNES-level like support from 3rd parties. They have always been about quality over quantity since the N64 days but I think it was easier back then because games did not take nearly as long to make. I mean Rare pumped out what, 10 games for the N64 at least in it's relatively short lifespan. If they were still with Nintendo now we would not see 10 Rare games on the Switch in the same given timeframe. We would see 3 at most.

It's not just a question of quantity. The only relevant title confirmed, as of now, is Smash. Last year you had several high caliber titles.

But if you look from a 1st party perspective, it only gets worse.

Wii U in it's first 14 months (all original and only 1st party games)
Mario U
Nintendo Land
New Super Luigi U
Pikmin 3
Wii Party U
Wii Fit U
Mario 3D World

Switch in it's first 14 months (all original and only 1st party games)

Zelda BoTW (port, but ok)
Splatoon 2
Arms
Xenoblade 2
Mario Odyssey
1-2-Switch
Labo (i don't even consider it a game, but ok)

There's no meaningful difference between both consoles and there should be.
This year we should be seeing a way better release Schedule - even if not better than last year - but we aren't. So, it's more than a small bump in the road, at least for me.

Thankfully, the 3rd party situation is better than Wii U's.

The last two Nintendo E3 showings were acclaimed. 

And your attempt to lambast Nintendo’s output would be a little more understandable if they didn’t consistently have the most acclaimed first-party releases. I also have every system and while I love using my PS4 for third-parties and streaming capabilities, their games never touch on some of the genres that Nintendo seems to have cornered the niche on, so I don’t see how you’d replace either one with the other when they coexist incredibly well. 

Side note - MARIO Tennis for the SP was incredible and if this game is supposed to follow in the vein of that game like Nintendo said, it makes sense that gamers would be excited for a quality release.

The best-selling Smash game is at 14.58M copies shipped. SSB4 is not a single platform game and the series is consistently growing. We already know Fire Emblem, Smash, Yoshi, Yokai Watch 4, Mario Tennis Aces and some other games are on the docket for 2018. Then there are expected games like Pokemon, Animal Crossing, Star Fox, etc. coming up with the possibility of certain third-party hits like Fortnite. And since Nintendo’s offering is only growing as opposed to competing with their previous year, I don’t see why you wouldn’t expect to see growth.

I'm not talking about the growth of the console. The subject arrived on individual games reception, their fanbases size and social media impact. And about that, the entire list you gave combined maybe isn't even enough to compare to Mario Kart. Only Pokemon is comparable to the size of Mario and Mario Kart, the rest is much smaller. It doesn't mean that the console will sell less though, since the Mario games are available for it anyway.

And steam has tens of games that releases every week, doesn't mean that the platform doesn't go through a dry spell of good games. 

You must also look at what the competition is doing, and so far the Switch has had a barren year. 

Well, with your criteria being that narrow, is not hard to see why you have problems with game outputs.

I guess about the only thing that fits would be Kirby Star Allies, unless a 70s meta game is too low for your high quality gaming taste.