I’ve felt for a while now that Nintendo has a tendency to ignore some obvious areas of high demand. This also happened with casual gaming, they dropped (well, more like a prolonged fumble of) the ball, by scaling back toward the end of the Wii/DS era, and then iOS devs picked it up and made it into the largest category of the last 15 years. And when I say “casual game” I don’t mean “games made for idiots” but rather the type of game designed for short sessions and the game persists over a long period of time (usually years).

To be fair, Nintendo does seem to have been making a solid effort - Animal Crossing NH and Pokémon Go being the most obvious success stories. But it feels like they often don’t take advantage of their own properties as well as they should - Pokémon Go is nowhere to be found on Nintendo hardware; and despite what many believe, Let’s Go Pikachu is not a port of Pokémon Go, but rather a remake of the original Pokémon game.

But this fumbling seems to not be anywhere near as bad as the motion gaming industry, they smashed the ball out of the park with that in the Wii era - and the decline in motion gaming seems to be more about the lack of supply rather than the lack of demand - that’s why these token games probably make it the highest per capita category/genre on Switch, and perhaps of all categories this generation on dedicated hardware - with all the games selling millions to tens of millions of units despite not having particularly high production values while still being priced relatively high compared to other games.

Nintendo is highly successful as is, so it’s hard to look at them and say “they made mistakes here” - perhaps they’re just so damn good at the other stuff that they don’t have the capacity to be as successful as they should be at these other things that they are also great at doing. If anything, I’ll end this rant saying this is a next generation opportunity. The demand for motion games is still there, and it’s between Nintendo and VR platforms to capture it.

Funnily enough this is a main reason Ubisoft's Just Dance series (80 million for the franchise) continues to sell best on Nintendo by a wide margin.

Joycons work better then controllers with this game

It's not like Nintendo hasn't found good success at the more casual level of entry when you look at revival of franchises like "Wii" Sports, ClubHouse Games or the new IP Ring Fit Adventure. There's still a part of the old market who might kinda expect those type of fun experiences in the platform a d make it work because Nintendo is there to provide them.
Good thing is, it's not their main sale argument anymore but it's definitely a good thing financially to still produce those.

The fact that the Yen is low is probably also part of what boosts the sales, since people buy from Japan probably in other asian countries, have it shipped, while their currency is much stronger. I would argue the Yen weakness and Switch unusual hold in Japan are in direct relation.

I feel like they have been sitting on Prime 4 long enough that they may as well make it cross gen.  Metriod might move 3 to 5M Switch 2 units on it's own.  It should not be the big launch title though.  Without another Zelda or likely 3D Mario I would launch with Prime 4 and the next Mario Kart. Hit hard out of the gate. The more the merrier.  I don't think a Prime 4 is big enough to cannibalize any Kart sales.

Edit Metroid is one of my favorite franchises.  Just like with the Switch & BotW I would be willing to buy a system just to play the best version of Prime 4.

Below I make an early quaterly assumption to reach the goal of 13.5m in FY25. If we presume that Nintendo can really ship 13.5m in FY25 it will be an exact 14.01% decline from FY24. When we apply that 1:1 to each quarter we would reach the following:

1. Shipping of 13.5m in FY25 with 14.01% decline from FY24, evenly by quarter:

Q1: 3.36
Q2: 2.53
Q3: 5.93
Q4: 1.68

However, we can't apply it 1:1 each quarter as we had Zelda: Tears of the Kindom in Q1 of FY24. Therefore, and taking into consideration the most recent numbers we have from Japan and Europe for April so far, the decline for Q1 of FY25 must be much higher than 14.01%. We also know that Nintendo overshipped probably more than 500'000 units in Q3 of FY24. I don't think Nintendo will overship by that much this coming holidays. Therefore, the decline for Q3 of FY25 probably is higher than 14.01% as well. To still reach the 13.5m, it means that Q2 and Q4 of FY25 must be up YoY. Especially, Q4 should be significantly up YoY because, as mentioned before, I suppose there will be much less overshipping in Q3 and Pokémon Z-A will release during this quarter which will bump the numbers by quite a bit. On the other hand, Switch 2 will probably be revealed in Q4 which in turn will have a negative effect on sales. Considering all that but keeping the 13.5m for FY25, I make the following quaterly assumptions (with the help of complicated personal calculations to come to these specific numbers):

2. Shipping of 13.5m in FY25 with 14.01% decline from FY24 with more realistic distribution over the quarters:

Q1: 2.54 (-35.04%, Zelda: TotK effect and sales projection from most recent sales numbers from Japan and Europe for April)
Q2: 3.07 (+4.78%, I expect price cuts or bundles with a free game, starting during Q2, maybe the release of a new Switch SKU-model)
Q3: 5.53 (-19.86%, I think Nintendo will avoid overshipping too much like they did in Q3 of FY24, at the same time I expect a somewhat big title but nothing of the magnitude of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, maybe a new Donkey Kong game and/or a Pokémon remake or spin-off)
Q4: 2.36 (+20.41%, more base shipping than in Q4 of FY24 due to less overshipping in Q3 [see line above], release of Pokémon Z-A but reveal of Switch 2)

I think they are going to do a BotW E3 2016  this June Direct.

First trailer and name reveal for Metroid Prime4 with a release window of 2025.

After Switch2 reveal trailer (late 2024 or early 2025), a tweet that Prime4 will be cross gen.

Then at the Switch2 launch event a full blown trailer showing how much better Prime4 looks at new hardware.

They're doing exactly this but with the new 3D Mario instead.

I honestly disagree with both of you, and that's okay.

I do understand why they should, but things are looking towards a Switch release (probably 2024 holiday).

This or Mario Kart 9. Metroid isn't big enough to be a cross gen starter the way BotW was.