Breath of the Wild is selling better than Twilight Princess because it's a more widely appealing game. It's the first Zelda game that I've seen with a lot of female fans. It's not a Sony/PS4 style game in the slightest, the game is very much Nintendo style. A large part of what made Breath of the Wild popular was all the really cool stuff you can do in the game, it's a bit of an evolution of the original Zelda which had a very similar appeal to it. Breath of the Wild's physics engine definitely takes into account what Nintendo learned with games like Wii Sports and Mario Galaxy. But if someone sat down playing Zelda and said "Finally, a Nintendo console with games that aren't like Nintendo, and more like the stuff on PS4" I'd think they were nuts.

The console that was most like a Playstation was easily Gamecube. It was a PS2 clonebox along with Xbox. It remains to date my least favourite generation, because the only console I was remotely happy with was the Dreamcast, and that one flopped hard after around 2 years. It was a long wait for the Wii playing GBA and DS almost exclusively as far as current consoles went... Similar experience to the Switch with the Wii U.

- The top-sellers list doesn't mean much until the end of the gen. If RFA sells 20m and Just Dance 2023 sells 10m but the top sellers are Odyssey and GTA5 at 50m, that doesn't mean the casuals didn't come back and add to Switch's success.

Hey, maybe you are right and the Wii gamers will come back in droves during the next few years.  What we do know is that they aren't really on the Switch right now.  Right now the Switch has sold about 80m units, and about 7m are Ring Fit Adventure.  All of the titles that are in the Switch's top 10, right now, are not the titles that uniquely brought in new gamers like Wii Sports, Wii Play, etc....  We do have RFA which is like Wii Fit.  I totally agree that this is actually the type of game that can bring in Wii gamers.

- It's disingenuous to say Switch has an overly complicated control system when it's just 2 x upgraded Wiimotes, 2 x SNES/PS1 controllers or an upgraded Wiimote-Nunchuk combo. ARMS controls are similar to Wii Boxing, Mario Tennis/Golf have the same MC option as Wii Tennis/Golf and Bowling in 51 Clubhouse Games controls similarly to Wii Bowling.

The touchscreen tablet form factor and familiarity is arguably just as accessible as a TV remote and IR sensor bar given the prevalence of smart devices today.

Really?  Do you really believe all of this?  The PS1 controller is what a complicated control system looks like, especially if you are talking about the one with 2 analogue sticks.  This is the single biggest thing that keeps so-called casual gamers away from other game systems like the PS4.  A simple control system is the Wii remote with no nunchuck necessary.  You just swing it like in Wii Bowling or Wii Tennis.  Another simple control system would be a game like Pac-Man.  It just needs a joystick and no buttons.  This made the game more successful than most of its contemporaries which needed a joystick + 1 button.  The simpler the controls, the better.

Also the phrase "The touchscreen tablet form factor and familiarity is arguably just as accessible as a TV remote and IR sensor bar given the prevalence of smart devices today" makes it sound like you are defending the Wii U.

- I think you're falling into the trap of believing the Wii's success was primarily due to Wii Sports. Wii Sports was bundled everywhere except Japan and it isn't the highest selling Wii game there. Do you think Wii's sales would have been badly hurt if Wii Sports would have been delayed for 2 years but we got Wii Fit and motion controlled Mario Tennis, Golf, Bowling at launch instead?

Yeah, I think the biggest killer app on the Wii was Wii Sports.  And then 33m came back to buy Wii Sports Resort.  It was clearly a popular franchise on the Wii.

When Switch can match the value of Wii and Wii Sports (+WSR) then you'll see even more of the casuals come back like they did for RFA and Just Dance. It would be stupid for Nintendo to repeat the same stupid mistake of releasing a sports compilation for free and then attempting to sell standalones afterwards. Better to rinse the hardcore consumer at full price first and then bring Switch Sports later.

I can agree with what you said here.  If Nintendo actually releases another good sequel to Wii Sports, then yeah the Wii crowd will buy the Switch too.  They just haven't done that yet.

If those 8m RF casuals only returned when RF appeared that means RFA would be responsible for ~1/3rd of this years hybrid sales given no-one buys a Switch Lite for RFA.

Seems unlikely that Switch would have such poor 2020 sales without RFA.

You made a long thoughtful post with some good points.  However, I can tell by these first two words that you missed the context of what I was talking about.  Let me back up and provide some context.

Go back to Rol's table in his first post.  If you are like me, then it probably is not entirely clear what some of his terms mean immediately, and you might also wonder why he put some systems into certain categories.  After getting a couple of replies from him, I realized that he is using the terms "arcade" and "accessible" interchangeably.

For example in one previous post he said, "I've said it multiple times before, a complete version of such a table would include handheld consoles. I can tell you where Nintendo's handhelds would be placed: GB/C, GBA and DS would all be Arcade Evolution, because those were the games those handhelds were about."

Does the DS really represent arcade gaming though?  It has a touch screen and stylus.  This kind of control scheme is pretty similar to how a mouse works.  With a mouse you might scroll your cursor onto some icon and click on it, and that is pretty similar to tapping your stylus on an icon on a touchscreen.  The DS controls are actually a move toward the PC direction compared to the GBA.  Also there were some top selling DS games like Brain Age and Nintendogs which used a stylus a lot like how a person might play these games with a mouse.  The DS is definitely an accessible system, but it is also a move toward PC gaming compared to the GBA.  However, Rol says the DS and GBA are equally arcade-like, because he is using the terms "arcade" and "accessible" interchangeably.

Now the systems we were actually comparing were not the DS and GBA.  We were comparing the Wii and the Switch.  Rol has both of these in his "arcade evolution" category, because he thinks they are both equally accessible.  I don't think these two systems are equally accessible.  I don't think the Switch has any really popular game that is accessible as Wii Sports.

Now you, or anyone else, are free to disagree with me.  Maybe you think the Switch is just as accessible as the Wii or even more accessible.  However, at least now I hope you know the context of what I was talking about.

Brain Training had you hold the DS like a book and use the stylus like a pen. Arcade-like simplicity.

In regards to point n touch/press/click, you're right it's like a mouse but the mouse was a simple, arcade-like innovation for computers.

I think the Switch has a lot more in common with the SNES, Genesis and PS1 (and even the PS2, to a lesser extent) than the Wii, but I don’t think it has much in common with the PS4/Xbox either.

I tend to think of the Switch as a “Super SNES”. This amazing system really throws me in a glorified SNES/PS1 era. 

Gotta admit, I'm a bit irked. Cause this feels a bit evasive, and I feel I wasted my time in replying. 

There isn't any context I missed or misunderstood. I generally find semantic argument about labels, such as what counts as arcade or not to be incredibly dull and pointless. If two people agree on terms, then that's all that matters. So, while I understand your discussion about arcade vs accessibility, I did not respond to that part.

The question of where Switch sales likely came from is a question that can be answered with facts, data, and logic, and is one that I thought might be worth discussing. That's the point I chose to comment on. Whether the Switch sales came from the PS4 and Xbox 1 as you stated is a factual claim that stands on its own independent of any context. The Switch sales came from the PS4 or they did not, and what Rol means by "arcade evolution" is completely irrelevant to that point. Whether the Switch is as accessible as the Wii is at best tangentially related to the claim.  

I'll give the benefit of the doubt that this was not an attempt to be evasive. So, kindly answer these yes or no questions.

1. Did you say "these "new" sales the Switch is getting are not coming from the Wii. The extra sales are coming from the PS4 and XB1 crowd"?

2. Was my post responsive to this claim? I.e. did it propose reasons why we either should or should not accept that claim?

If the answer to both of these questions is yes, then you should either explain why my counterargument is not sound, or concede that the extra sales are not likely from the PS4 crowd. Alternatively, you can say "I'm not going to defend the point, and you wasted your time replying". But, don't tell me that I somehow "missed the context" when I am directly addressing a claim you made. 

Even if Switch was limited to former Wii owners, it would still have a much higher potential consumer base if most of those Wii owners wanted a Switch. The reason is Wii wasn't commonly owned by just one person, it was usually communally owned or used, by a household or a family. If you lived in a house with 4 or 5 other roommates, it's unlikely you'd have more than one Wii between everyone; but you might have 4 or 5 Switches down the road. This is why even though way more DSs sold, just about every DS owner had a Wii at home - even if they didn't themselves own a Wii.

It's also why I like the Switch hybrid so much, because this can work with Switch alone - a household with one Switch as the community console might turn into a household with 4-5 personal Switch consoles (speaking from experience).

Well, as of 2020 40% of Switch owners also have PS4 or Xbox in USA

In UK this number is closer to 60%

So yeah, like half of Switch userbase comes from PS4/Xbone

Switch having a huge part of DS owners makes sense, as half of DS owners also bought a 3DS and Switch is just the sequel of 3DS. The four biggest 3DS franchises are also exclusively on Switch: Aninal Crossing, Pokemon, Mario Kart and 2D Marios

But Wii-only gamers are honestly a minor factor here. With 4 Wii-related games selling over 20 million copies and not a single one of them being on Switch it's hard to believe the Wii-only gamers come back to Switch 

I'm actually more inclined to believe very old Nintendo gamers from SNES and N64 who left Nintendo home consoles came back again to play Mario Odyssey and Breath of The Wild 

There's a few problems here.

1. First off, there's a chicken and an egg problem. For instance, I own a PS4 and an XBox One, I'm primarily a Nintendo gamer. So, if you just count co-ownership, you don't whether it is somebody who owned a PS4 who was converted to Wii, or vice versa. Knowing the gaming preference would be useful here. 

For clarity's sake, I should have probably said something like "lapsed Wii gamers". What I assume was meant, (at least what I meant) was people who were Wii owners, didn't buy a 3DS or a Wii U, and now bought a Switch. These people might have bought a PS4 in the interim (like me) but the appeal of the Switch was for a Wii-ish experience.

2. Second, that figure is going down if you believe the available data (we have no idea of knowing how accurate it is since there is one source as far as I know). In 2018 the figure was 70%.https://nintendosoup.com/npd-70-of-switch-owners-also-own-a-ps4-or-xbox-one/

We were somewhere over 50 in early 2019 https://gamingbolt.com/over-50-of-switch-owners-own-ps4-over-40-own-xbox-one-npd-group

Now we're at over 40. https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2020/01/more_than_40_percent_of_switch_owners_in_the_us_have_another_video_game_system

The data on this seems to all come from NPD. Possibly their data is off altogether (even if not there'd be a margin of error). But if we want to take their results at face value, that means that the number of co-owners is shrinking pretty quickly, and will likely continue to fall. This would suggest that the early adopters were generally big gamers (not surprising) who were likely to buy multiple consoles, and the newer people buying Switches are not PS4 or XBox One owners.  

3. Building on that point, what about Wii? The data on that is more scarce but, as of 2009, https://www.alistdaily.com/media/most-wii-owners-do-not-own-xbox-360-ps3/ about 14% of Wii owners had a PS3 and about 26% owned a PS3. That number almost definitely went up as sales of the Wii dropped, sales of the 360 and PS3 increased, and Sony and Microsoft both directly targeted the Wii market with Kinect and Move. Depending on how many people owned all three, between 26 and 40% of Wii owners had another console as of 2009.

Considering that the number of Switch owners who own another console has been dropping and is somewhere above 40% (in the US anyway), then ultimately, the numbers of Switch owners owning a PS4One will not be too far off from Wii60 and PSWii owners. 

As for the "4 Wii games" argument...

1. This is pretty sketchy. I'm not sure exactly what you're counting, cause technically there are 5. Wii Sports, Play, Fit, Fit Plus, Sports Resort. 

Wii Fit/Plus has a spiritual successor in Ring Fit that is actually doing quite very well. It will definitely hit ten million, and has the potential to hit 20 million in the long run. Play shouldn't count because it was purchased mainly because it came with an additional Wiimote. So, there's really only two that haven't yet come to Switch, Sports and Sports resort.

Also, if you want to say that the gamers can't be former Wii players because the games with "Wii in the title" didn't come to Switch, then how does that jive with PS4 owners accounting for a huge jump in sales? Call of Duty and GTA aren't here, Fifa ain't selling on Switch, and TLOUS style horror games aren't doing much. 

2. The problem here again is that like Laser, you're conflating Wii owners with "people who bought Wii Sports and nothing else". And, that really isn't the case.

The Wii sold about 920 million games. Wii Sports/Play/Fit/Plus/Play/Motion/Party/Music etc sold around 190 million copies. This is only about 20% of what was purchased for the Wii.

So sure, there are some people who only played Wii Sports and Wii Fit and nothing else, and those people probably have not bought a Switch and likely will not unless something like that comes out, and maybe not even them.

But, a lot of Wii/DS owners bought Wii Sports and then played Mario Kart, or Mario Party, New Super Mario Bros, Smash, Kirby, Paper Mario, Mario Galaxy, Pokemon, etc. Those games dropped big from Wii/DS days and now are jumping back up again.

So... which who's more likely buying Mario Party, Ring Fit, and Mario Odyssey, in huge numbers while not buying almost no rated M games, shooters, or sports games (except maybe Fortnite)?

Honestly, this is a system where Clubhouse Games is outselling NBA 2K, Doom, Fifa, Witcher 3, and Skyrim, and people are like "you know, I bet it's succeeding because of all those PS4 fans". Come on now... 

I'm actually more inclined to believe very old Nintendo gamers from SNES and N64 who left Nintendo home consoles came back again to play Mario Odyssey and Breath of The Wild 

O_o..?

Mario Galaxy outsold Mario 64. New Super Mario Bros Wii outsold Mario World (by a lot). And Galaxy 2 crushes Mario World 2 for what it's worth.

Considering that, why on Earth would you be inclined to believe that the group that bought less Mario, is less than half the size in absolute numbers, and last bought a Nintendo console a decade or two earlier bought more Switches than Wii owners?

It's semi more plausible with Zelda (TP sold about the same as Ocarina without GC sales, although it handily outsold LTTP), but still outside some weird Wii bias, I can't figure out why this would be logical.