It's gonna be intresting how the successor of the hybrid home console will do since we never had one before. Traditional consoles have always been high in demand cause of people wanting next level power wants gonna be the appeal for switch 2 since on a small screen everything looks great. 

While I wouldn't say it's in their interest to re-join the graphics arms race these days, the SNES, N64, and Gamecube had top visuals for their time.

Keep in mind that probably most Switch owners use it docked at least sometimes with many using it docked mostly or always so higher power still appeals there. In fact it'll also appeal to the handheld users since they'll get better performance and be able to play even the most demanding gen 8 tier games and even some gen 9 tier ones on the go.

For how it'll do the safe guess is it'll be really successful but not sell as much as the original Switch since it benefited a lot from Nintendo being able to re-release games from their previous system, not having any real competition in the handheld space for the vast majority of its life and in particular the the boost it got from the pandemic. The Switch 2 also has things going for it like Nintendo's brand being the strongest it's ever been but that'll only do much to make up for things like the pandemic boost. It should outsell it for the first 2-3 years but after that it should have a hard time staying ahead the following 2-3 years. 

Are you saying they gambled on the GameCube or the switch?

I wouldn't describe Gamecube as a "gamble" per se. It was a mostly standard, power-competitive home console.

It just had a number of poor choices that killed its appeal. Both its look and much of its first party output felt geared towards young children, at a time when gaming was shifting towards teenagers and adults. Many of Nintendo's games on it also made weird design choices that made them less appealing to a mainstream audience, like DK Jungle Beat being built around the bongo controller, Double Dash overcomplicating Mario Kart's elegant simplicity, Mario Sunshine featuring Mario as a janitor in a monotonous resort setting, Starfox becoming a mediocre Zelda clone, etc.

The Switch was more of a gamble, because the hybrid concept was unproven in terms of mainstream appeal. A few systems had tried something similar, but not to the same extent and not with major success. It paid off big time, but in 2017 it was a significant risk.

I really don't think switch was a huge risk. It was genius more then big risk. They finally made a nextgen handheld with all the bells and whistles. They focused on the market where they dominated and made a product that you expect Sony or Microsoft would make, and when I say this I mean it has tech you would expect for its time and all.the features that make sense .

I think maybe it was a risk in part because the Wii U was also tablet based. But when they threw in the portability aspect of the system, that turned it all around. The games and everything else...of course helped a lot as well 

Portable systems tend to be more price-sensitive than home consoles, (3DS sold poorly out of the gate at $250 while Vita at the same price was DOA) so Switch launching at $300 was risky; it's easy to look back now and say it's clearly worth it, but hindsight is 20/20. A lot of folks including experienced industry analysts thought Switch was doomed when its price was announced.

Their handheld line had kept them going through flops like Gamecube and Wii U; to abandon their proven strategy of a cheap handheld in favour of a more powerful and expensive hybrid device was a considerable gamble.

I hope not. The switch is my second main system, and i love it as it is. I spend more time on it in portable mode.

I'd include Famicom. It was ahead of SG 1000 and Atari offerings of the time. 2 years after its launch SMS outclassed it tho again 2 years newer.