I haven't confused anything, weak year is subjective! That's the point, neither I nor Nintendo gives a damn about what you view as weak. 2020 stacks up well against any of those years. The proof is in the pudding, people are buying games in droves because the line up isn't weak to them. AC, 3D Mario classic collection, and Zelda spinoff doesn't stack well against what year? I'm only naming what I believe the biggest sellers will be and besides 2017, I don't see another year really being significantly better than 2020. 2020 already has the Switch's second highest seller after only 4 months. 3D collection will probably beat any other years second best seller. Here ill do a list.

2017: Mario Kart, BoTW, Odessey, Splaton

2018: Smash, Poke Lets Go, Mario Party, Mario Tennis or DK

2019: Poke Sw&Sh, Luigi, Mario Maker, 2D Zelda

2020: AC, 3D Collection, Hyrule Warriors, Paper Mario

Those are i believe the top sellers for each year and honestly 2020 can probably give any of those others besides 2017 a run for their money. The other years need to make up for the thrashing AC will give Smash and Poke Sw/Sh. Then 3D collection will probably beat Luigi or Mario Maker and Pokemon Lets Go. So yes from Nintys perspective despite Covid they look pretty damn good. 

Let's tally the sales totals for all these games in a year. Someone necrobump this on 9/9/2021! In fact, let's add a few more games to each year, just to make it a more accurate comparison.

2017: Mario Kart, BotW, Odyssey, Mario X Rabbids, Splatoon 2, Arms, Xenoblade 2, Pokken, 1-2 Switch

2018: Smash, Let's Go, Mario Party, Mario Tennis, Tropical Freeze, Bayo 2, Treasure Tracker, Octopath, Labo, Hyrule Warriors, Torna, Star Allies, Fitness Boxing

2019: Sword/Sheild, Luigi 3, Mario Maker, Link's Awakening, Astral Chain, Yoshi's Crafted World, Dragonquest S, Fire Emblem, NSMBU Deluxe, Ring Fit

2020: AC, All Stars, Age of Calamity, Paper Mario, Bravely Default II, Pikmin 3, Xenoblade HD, Clubhouse Games, Mystery Dungeon, Tokyo Mirage Sessions, Mario RC Cars

And just to make it even more fun, let's hold a poll on the site on 9/9/2021. We can ask the userbase here which was the weakest year for Nintendo Switch, from a games lineup perspective. :D

Edit: Adding some games that I missed.

The way people sometimes feel about Nintendo is more about how they communicate with the fanbase no?
And it's understandable that there can be a feeling of an upcoming drought when a lot of their announcements are dated pretty close to the release of said game.

I wonder why you made sure to give the other years atleast 8 titles but only 6 for 2020? So you can add atleast Xenoblabe HD and Clubhouse Games. Lets also just ignore the fact that the other years will obviously have the advantage of more time on the market since they are older years. Unless we wait til the end of the generation, someone will have a disadvantage. Older years have more time to sell. I kept it to just the "tent pole releases" because I feel like those titles are less affected by time on the market. Also I could careless about the opinions of people that visit gaming websites because they are just as clueless as any other people in the world despite having the data in front of them. You yourself proved that with your Dreams mistake ;)

It's clear this year line up is less appealing than 2017, 2018 and 2019 from:

- Commercial point of view. This year line up will sell far less than anything from the past except AC, pretty much the only evergreen title releases this year

- Critical point of view: No huge acclaimed IP besides AC, let alone a GOTY contender like BOTW or Odyssey. You can "bypass" lack of acclaim by bringing in ports of older games like Mario All Stars

- And technical point of view: Huge amount of ports some with not too many enchantments on graphics, gameplay, whatsoever, with only Hyrule Warriors, Paper Mario e AC are new games and even production value of Paper Mario is really debatable...


I do agree people on this thread may be dramatic, but guys at this point you are just blindingly defending Nintendo over something that can't be defended

I can (barely) accept excuses for an underwhelming line up like Covid, nice 3rd party/indie support, a plenty of older games to play, yadda yadda , but you are going too far pretending that it has been a great year in any of those 3 aspects. Please don't expect every one of us to join this state of dementia cause we won't

Sure let's add Xenoblade HD, and Clubhouse games. Also the Tokyo Mirage Sessions port. Sorry, there's just too many games to remember sometimes. We can do this in a year or at the end of Switch's life cycle. Your choice. I'm willing to play the long game here. :D

Edit: Just wanted to add, that while older games have the advantage of being on the market longer, newer games have the advantage of a bigger Switch install base from the get go.

I do agree that investing at least a bit more would be nice instead of sitting on a lot of cash. I've heard that Japanese homes are on the smaller side so having space for that equipment could maybe be an issue. Now I don't actually know for sure how much impact it's having on Nintendo but from what I've seen and read it's a possibility to me that it's impacting them worse than the other two.

In mid May Furukawa said covid is having a large development impact in Japan since they didn't already have a remote development environment in place. I don't know how accurate he was being when saying that but if he was being truthful then it means there's more to it than just them delaying because they can. However it won't be possible to know things for sure till 2021 and how big the lineup for Switch is that year.

He said the truth, but Japan was backing to normality in May already. It could explain a delay of 1 or 2 months (March, April) but it has been over for quite some time. Unless some games had REALLY tight deadlines there is not reason for delaying games for months and months

You could be right. I don't know anything about what's actually going on at Nintendo so for right now I'll go with it being a mixture, 2020 was gonna be overall on the weaker side like 2018 but it was made even weaker by covid. How much weaker exactly I am unsure about. If the pattern started by 2017 continues though this means 2021 should hopefully be a strong year.

Yeah, 2021 should be glorious.