Everything about the Wii U was flawed except the games. As a concept it was fundamentally broken.

But we've made a breakthrough here; you call the Vita "a portable with no 1st party support and no AAA third party games". We are in agreement; it is its library that let it down, hence why it was outsold in Japan by the PS4 in Japan; because the PS4, while lacking portability, offered more games that Japanese gamers wanted to play. The Switch outsold the PS4 for the same reason; because it offers games that better appeal to the particular tastes of Japanese gamers. The software charts confirm this.

I'd say that PS4 almost didn't have competition. It was fighting Wii U in Japan. We must consider that too.

Even though I agree with you that games are very important, I believe portability is much more. Wii U had lots of great games that cater to the Japanese. It had almost everything Nintendo-wise and regarding Nintendo consoles, usually Nintendo games are the only ones that matter and about the easiest to become million sellers.

In terms of games, Wii U was brilliant for the Japanese audience. Wii U looked very flawed for the worldwide audience, but for the Japanese, it looked like a very good and decent home console, a proper Wii successor.

As Rol pointed out, the Wii U's library may not look lightyears behind the Switch at a glance, but then you have to remember that on Wii U those games were stretched thin over more than 4 years with crippling game droughts in between, with some like BOTW releasing after the system was already dead. On Switch, by contrast, a superior library has been amassed in less than half the time, resulting in a much faster and more consistent stream of relevant software to keep sales going. A game like BOTW as a launch title obviously does more good for hardware sales than BOTW launching on a dead platform.

You guys are really under selling the appeal of the hardware. Switch didn't have droughts  because most of it's big games are from the Wii U, aside from MO, and splatoon 2. Wii U had all those big games that is selling the switch at the moment, yet it only managed 3 million units, think about that. it's like when playstation 4 launched in Europe, all it's software was mostly available on ps3, yet every bought a PS4. it's not all about software, being hardware that people want plays a major role. Europe, and US have similar tastes in games. yet in Europe xbox is selling like crap, while in the US it's doing fine. Handhelds have always sold better in japan. I would love to see Nintendo make a traditional console, and prove me wrong.

Nintendo cannot sustain the releases they had with switch. With technology getting more advanced games are only gonna take longer to make.

Going back to vita. the reason it failed in japan was because it failed WW, support was dead from the very beginning. yet it still did descent numbers in japan, compared to other consoles. 

You're really jumping off the deep end here. Of course switch is a  legitimate success, but it's not a traditional home console, or stationary console if that makes you feel better. Anyway Wii U first year line up was damn solid, it had tons of third-party support and 2D Mario which was up there with Nintendo biggest franchise at the time, i wonder what did WIIU sell it's first year in japan, oh yea it sold like crap. Anyway i know i'm not convincing you, and you are not convincing me. you will always have some straw man excuse, well those games didn't come out as fast as  they did on switch, of course they didn't switch is getting old ports of wiiu games, and it's doing wonders on switch. While those on games on Wii U being totally brand new didn't even move to the needle because it's obvious Japan prefers handhelds heavily this is well known, just ask any gamer that lives in japan, it's cultural thing.   

You are very funny.

Go ahead and post a comprehensive list of the damn solid lineup that the Wii U had in its first year along with the release dates.

I don't see what's so funny about it. it launched with the sequel to one of the best selling games ever in japan, it had  good third party support early on. a year later it had a amazing Mario 3d world, then a few months later Mario kart 8, followed by smash. This is all within 2 years of launch, these games we also a gigantic leap in graphics over the wii, a much fresher experience then Wii U ports. 4 massive franchises  in 2 years span, but Wii u was already dead at that point regardless of Nintendo franchises, if was handheld i would eat my own shorts if in those 2 years if it didn't sell 6 million.