no way are you saying that GCN had nothing when Pikmin 1+2 exist.

Also, Wii had the worst of it. Wii U was rough, but it was the calm before the Switch. Wii was the calm before catastrophe.

So true. Third party on the Wii in its final years was either shovelware or Ubisofts Let's Dance.

First party we got DK Returns in 2010, Skyward Sword in 2011 and a Kirby collection of old games. Nothing else I can remember. Oh and a frustrating Metroid game (Other M) also 2010.

The last year of the Wii was a desert and way worse than what the Wii U went out with. Sure, the final Wii U games weren't massive but there were games. A beloved Zelda remake, a Star Fox, a Paper Mario, Pokken. Solid ending.

The wii U came out and just started dying right out the gate. What else can be worse.

Gamecube was by far the worst. I don’t think anyone was playing it during its final 2 years except those really nasty “Nintendo betrayed me with the Wii” weirdos.

All the other consoles had interesting games, but I don’t think Gamecube had anything except B-Tier, PS2 ports with missing content and features, and Resident Evil 4 at the end - and RE4 was better on PS2, best on Wii. Even Wii U did better than that with Xenoblade Chronicles X, Breath of the Wild, Mario RPG, Ogre Battle 64, Tokyo Mirage Sessions, Axiom Verge, Shantae, and the VC titles from TG16 and DS that debuted in 2016 and ran until sometime in 2018 (not that anyone was really playing those).

I mean if we look at the releases and numbers, there's an argument for almost every console. You could say the GC and Wii U got LoZ releases as a finale, both of which were epic. The caveat of course was that they were next gen launch titles which takes off the impact.

For me, I'll go with "feel". Releases for the Wii U felt like oases in the desert, and by the end of the Wii U era I think a lot of people doubted the legitimacy of Nintendo in the console market. And yes it got BoTW, but it wasn't exclusive, and barely anyone got it for the Wii U. The last 3 years of the Wii U era felt like a slow death

Outside of a little extra content in the form of Ada's side story, the RE4 port on PS2 was inferior in every way imaginable.

But otherwise, I was going to say what you were alluding to in that everyone seems to be forgetting that the Wii U had something the N64, GCN and Wii didn't have, which was a solid pipeline of indy games. Shantae, Freedom Planet, OlliOlli, Don't Starve, Oddworld, Chariot, Citizens of Earth, Octodad the aforementioned Axiom Verge, Runbow. All of these were on Wii U, forgive me if not all of them fall within the two years before the launch of the Switch.

In both 2015 and 2016 there were some really great indy games - a lot were already mentioned, I'll add Shovel Knight, Affordable Space Adventures and SteamWorld Heist. But in 2017, WiiU felt like it was instantly cut from life support, both from Nintendo and other devs.

Just looking at all of the announcements on the front page of this site alone (Capcom Fighting Collection 2, Tales of Graces f Remastered, new Rune Factory), not to mention a new first party release from Nintendo every month from here through November, plus another Pokemon Legends AZ: I think we can all agree that the answer is not the Switch. This is the first time I've ever had a contemporary console that has gotten such a deluge of support this late into its life.

Oh, and look at that, we're also getting Suikoden remasters, the Castlevania DS collection and a Yakuza game too! And I really should wait longer, because there will be more!

As barren as the Wii U was post-2014, and for as much as Star Fox Zero may have been the avatar for everything that was wrong with the system, those years did give us two titles that would go on to be vital parts of the Switch era, namely Splatoon and Super Mario Maker. By contrast, the best we got from the comparable part of the Gamecube's lifespan was Metroid Prime 2; a good game, but not really one that left a huge impact on its own series, let alone Nintendo's larger fortunes.