It's kind of hard to say. I remember being not too blown away by the trailer. Aside from Mario Odyssey, it all seemed to be games that were available on the Wii U or elsewhere (it wasn't clear at the time if Splatoon was a new game or a port of the first). I recognized the concept had more appeal than the Wii U, so I certainly expected it to do better, but I didn't think it would do this much better. I just didn't think the demand for a hybrid console was that great.

At the moment the thing debuted... I imagine I would have said 50 million give or take 10 million units. As it got closer to launch I probably would have said more, but I still wouldn't have guessed it'd potentially do 100 million as it seems like it may. Happy to be wrong.

On the contrary, I was very bullish about the Wii U when that was announced, so maybe my judgment isn't all that great XD

https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread/221574/early-nintendo-switch-sales-predictions/1/

https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread/227213/nintendo-switch-selling-life-time-poll/1/

and for an idea of what some people thought the direction Nintendo should go instead.....

https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread/224602/can-we-agree-nintendo-should-go-third-party-now/1/

Well, I found my original prediction from the 2nd thread. And just as I thought, I ended up raising the floor and ceiling of my prediction.

In the second thread for my original.

"Where's the poll on holiday?

I'll give 80m as my prediction given it's unified nature."

My prediction was (and actually is) 100/110M.

I made a poll asking for the sales back in january 2017. More than half of voters expected less than 50%. Less than 10% of voters choose '>100M'.

https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=224679

I myself was expecting 50M.

There's the poll I was thinking of.

I reckon a fair few folks are not owning up to their wrong predictions. ;)

I'm surprised how well Rol's prediction holds up. And also that quite some Nintendo-fans were pretty pessimistic, myself included.

In our defense, it was hard not to be pessimistic after the hellish extended shitshow that was 2011-2016. :P

Yeah, Nintendo lost a lot of trust even from fans with the WiiU.