It's not that buttons and sticks are hard to use, it's that having a cumbersome mandatory second screen controller that the console only support one of just wasn't an appealing gimmick, it got in the way of straightforward accessible gameplay experiences. 

BOTW, while a technically complex game, was elegantly simple to actually play. Something like Nintendoland was just a convoluted mess of gimmicky nonsense.

Execution absolutely made a world of difference between Wii U and Switch, but their core mentality is deeply different in spite of their superficial similarities.

We're talking profit here, not revenue?

Wii Fit was #6 and #7 on Wii, Ring Fit would be #6 on Switch if it didn't have to compete with Pokemon, Animal Crossing and a real Zelda like Wii Fit. It's the biggest new IP of the gen so far and the 9th biggest IP on the system. Despite being a new IP and not having a portable mode it's still sold more than nearly every Pokemon game.

Switch Sports is Nintendo's biggest sports game dwarfing Mario Golf, Tennis and ARMS. They'll probably be the biggest new IPs of the gen taking 9th and 10th spot overall and they'd be even higher if you ignore software sales from the Lite and removed handheld mode for every other game.

There's also a thing called the pandemic that shut down every gym on the planet and caused all fitness related products to skyrocket in demand, I don't think it would have those numbers without the pandemic occurring. Even basic barbells and weight benches were sold out on Amazon and in stores, Peloton stock went through the roof, etc. etc. 

You are the first one who links BotW's success to the N64. What a joke.

The heritage of the DS is that portable console gaming was taken seriously among third parties for the first time and not just a dumping ground for ports of old home console games. This is absolutely essential for Switch's success. But go ahead and pretend that Nintendogs and Brain Training were the key pillars of the DS's success.

lol you're seriously going to say Brain Training and Nintendogs now weren't key pillars of the DS? LOL, I think you've lost the plot on that. 

BOTW is definitely an expansion on the "3D epic" title lineage that Nintendo really began on the N64 with games like Mario 64, and obviously more specifically Ocarina of Time. BOTW is the modern day Ocarina of Time with all the evolution in 3D open world games that has come from then till now. I don't see anything wrong with that statement at all. 

Not sure why you find it so necessary to shame Nintendo hardware that didn't sell as well for various reason as some kinds of abominations or red headed step children or something. Systems like the N64 and GameCube and yes even Wii U still have merit and still have clear influence on the Switch. 

Sales believe it or not is the actual ultimate barometer for whether or not something is good. The top 10 selling music albums are not indisputably the 10 best music albums ever made. Avatar is not the best movie ever made, it's probably not even one of the 4-5 best James Cameron movies, even if it has the highest box office. If we're talking long term influence there are plenty of games, movies, game consoles, computer hardware, etc. etc. that were not the best selling of their era but went on to become far more influential in the long run too, there's no shortage of examples of that. 

Yes, I am saying that, because consoles don't sell 100m+ units based on two IPs alone, like you suggested for the Wii and the DS. The successes of the Wii and DS were based on so much more than gimmicks, but that's something that you don't want to admit, because then your entire house of cards would collapse and you couldn't assign Switch's success to Nintendo's failed consoles.

BotW's prototype was built with NES graphics and it is the original The Legend of Zelda that serves as the main inspiration. After all, the original game had an open world whereas no 3D Zelda has had one before BotW. It's no coincidence that the people who rave about the OoT/TP style dislike BotW, precisely because BotW is not an evolution of OoT.

Lastly, the reason why all this is important is because a reasonable analysis of the past allows one to predict the future with higher accuracy.

Why do you feel such a pressing need to label things a success or "failure" and even if at that, why do you assume then to tie quality in to sales. Those are not equivalent things. Is Taylor Swift (and I don't even have anything against Taylor Swift) the 2nd/3rd/4th greatest musician to ever live? Well based on sales numbers you could make the case, but does anyone actually believe that? 

Ideas/concepts have a time and place too. There's nothing Nintendo could have done in 2002, no controller, no marketing campaign, nothing that would've made Animal Crossing and Pikmin sell even a quarter of what they have sold today. The world wasn't keen on those ideas in 2002, it wasn't that the idea was some how wrong or without merit, it just wasn't the right time. Some ideas have their time and that's all there is to it, you can't force it or manufacture it, it just happens. 

It's fine to look at sales numbers but I think you go way overboard by coflating sales = quality. That's not true of any kind of art form, not movies, not music, and not games either. You'd get laughed at if you walked into a room of film enthusiasts and said Avatar is the greatest movie ever made because Box Office Mojo.com told you so based on numbers. 

So Ring Fit is a fad and Nintendo struck gold with the pandemic? That would also imply Switch Sports outsells Pokemon had it released pre-Covid.

I'm saying many fitness based products saw a huge surge in sales over the pandemic as people were not only locked out of gyms in some countries you weren't even allowed to go outside for a walk, lol. 

You couldn't even buy bog standard bar bells on Amazon and other fitness sites as they were sold out, I don't think it's any kind of stretch to say that had a huge impact on the sales of a lot of fitness based products. 

Switch Sports is barely even one of the top 20 selling Switch games, imagine if Wii Sports was the 19th top selling Wii game.