The Switch shows it doesn't really need that type of software to drive its sales though, which was not the case with the Wii. It's a bonus, but not the main driver of the hardware. 

An unprecedented once in a century (literally) event in the pandemic that shut down every public gym on the planet made any kind of new home gym product skyrocket in sales that has a lot to do with it too. Peloton stock was through the roof during the pandemic, now it's way down because people can go back to the gym and get a proper work out. 

But fitness is not a bad play to make the occasional game for, there's always going to be fat people who want to lose weight or people who want to lose weight in general. Diet fads are never ending there's a new one every year for like what the last 50 years? You can always capitalize with some kind of new way to lose weight and market it. 

Ring Fit didn't just sell gangbusters during lockdown though, that time is long over yet it's still selling at a vigorous pace, so its success cannot be solely or even really primarily attributed to that.

With over 14 million sales and counting, it shows how important it is to make these kind of blue ocean titles, that's not the kind of money you'd want to miss out on, especially when they are less of an investment to make compared to a mainline Mario or Zelda.

The strong sales of Switch Sports also speaks to the value of making them alongside more "core" oriented blockbusters.

The problem with fitness games in particular is popular fads do fizzle fast. We saw this on the Wii too where things like Zumba games and EA Active sold great and then they tried to make a sequel and it didn't sell so great. By the time Wii U came out, Wii Fit was no longer a system driver. 

The issue really is a lot of people will use something for fitness for a short while and then give up on it and then they don't want that thing again. Two years later they'll discover some other product that is the new go-to fitness fad and they want to do that instead. So like we'll see how a Ring Fit 2 would do, probably enough juice there to do well, but these concepts are inherently more difficult to franchise and Nintendo's whole business model revolves around creating a hit game that can spawn sequels for years and decades even. People who are hardcore into fitness want to be in a gym, people who are more casual about fitness are open to home products but they lose interest in the product especially when they realize they don't want to keep using the product after some time has passed. 

When Ring Fit was announced, people said the fitness game fad was over and so it wouldn't sell. And yet, it's one of the best selling games on Switch. Switch Sports too is selling great more than a decade after people said the "fad" was over.

There's simply no reason NOT to make these kind of games when they are low cost and can bring in a fortune when they take off.

The demand for fitness devices will never go away, that dwarfs Nintendo, so it's fine to make games like that, but you don't want to rely on those types of games to be hardware sales drivers. 

That market is fickle and maybe even a Ring Fit 2 will do well, but quite plausibly by Ring Fit 3 all of the sudden that audience is no longer interested because something else has caught their attention or they thought they would lose 20 pounds using it and didn't because they didn't want to put the effort in long term.

The Switch is a much more stable platform because games like that are a bonus, it doesn't have to rely on them to be key sellers though. Labo doesn't do so great? Not a big deal. Mario Kart: Live Circuit not really a big seller, not really a big deal. 

When the wins are as big as 14 million plus for a low budget title, making them is pretty much a pure win for Nintendo, which is the point. There is immense potential for profit with zero downside, their success proves there is great value in continuing to make blue ocean software.

They can but it's not that easy to come up with new blue ocean ideas either. Ring Fit is basically Wii Fit with more game like elements. Switch Sports is basically just Wii Sports. 

They've never really been able to come up with a idea beyond these two concepts going back to even the Wii era that was a huge hit. They definitely were banking on Wii Music being huge and it didn't take, Nintendo Land wasn't really a big hit either, Nintendogs which came before the Wii fizzled on the 3DS. Labo didn't take.

And I think that's reflective in their software output ... they do do "blue ocean" type software but it's generally limited to one game per year and it's not really a big part of their marketing focus for Switch. 

Your dislike of the Wii's legacy is running away with you a bit; all I said was there's clearly value in making blue ocean software. Nobody is advocating they make these games their focus. You don't need to downplay so hard.

The odd fitness game here and there is fine, when it becomes the focus and the fad bubble bursts, that's when you end up with things like the Wii U and 3DS launch window (that was supposed to be carried by Nintendogs + cats) disaster. 

The Switch is a much stronger platform because it doesn't need to rely on that consumer at all. 

All I'm saying is that not being dependent on blue ocean games doesn't mean they're not still a valuable addition.

The combination of low cost and potentially huge payoff means that making them once a year or so as they do on Switch is just good business.