I feel JackHandy was more referring to “playing it safe” with respect to branding. SNES and Wii U were branded as an upgraded NES and Wii (resp). Nothing entirely new or original, unlike NES, Wii, and NSW.

Considering what happened to the Wii-U and XBSS (i still see people confusing the XBSS with XboneS all the time on facebook marketplace), it's very risky. Those platforms looked very similar and had a similar name to their predecessors and failed massively in comparison. If the Yen keeps struggling vs other currencies and Nintendo are forced to keep to price high, we might have a situation where it's treated as a pro model and not adopted by the masses in the same way the Switch was. If adoption rates of switch 2 are poor it will force Nintendo to keep the switch alive longer and sell them together. One as an entry model and one as a pro model.

Same. Depending on how cool the 3D Mario launch game is I might buy the new system on launch or soon after, or I might just hold off for a few years since my Switch backlog is gonna take me a bunch more years to get through.

Anyway, "Switch 2" makes sense. That's exactly what the system (presumably) is, a direct successor to Switch, so unless they were going to call it Super Switch or something, Switch 2 is the obvious choice.

Maybe it won't sell as well as the original Switch, but I think Nintendo will be fine. With both their handheld and home console teams combined, there shouldn't be much issues getting games out. Besides, calling their next system the Switch 2 should make it clear it's a brand new console, not a pro model.

Hopefully Nintendo just rips the bandage off and we finally get the official reveal and all the details (new features, release date, price, launch window games) next month. By time the thing comes out, it will probably be the second-longest gap between a system and its successor ever behind only the Game Boy.

There are reasonable explanations for all of that.

Unlike the NES, the SNES had real competition. This was mainly a factor in NA (the SNES dominated in Japan, while Europe wasn't a major console market yet).  Once Nintendo's de facto monopoly ended in 1991 after multiple legal challenges and government probes, third parties were able to support Sega, and retailers were free to push Sega consoles as well. Also that year, Sega released the hugely successful Sonic the Hedgehog as an answer to Super Mario. So, unlike in the previous generation when the NES had a vastly larger library with many notable third-party exclusives, neither system had a clear advantage in terms of strength of software library (personal opinions aside). Sega also understood the importance of marketing. In the "Attitude Decade" that was the 90s in America, being highly confrontational and positioning themselves as the "cool" console proved highly successful for Sega. It didn't help that Nintendo wasn't doing anything to shake their kid-friendly image by having strict censorship policies prior to 1994 when the ESRB was formed. This reached a head with the release of the console versions of Mortal Kombat; the SNES version had the blood & gore removed, while the Genesis version had those left intact (though you needed a code to unlock the violent parts). Because of all of these factors, Sega was actually able to put up a serious fight against Nintendo that generation in the U.S.

The N64 lost a bunch of third-party support, in large part due to sticking with cartridges (and FWIW it was the market leader in the U.S. during its first 12 months; the PS1 didn't become the leader until FF7 was released). As a result, the PS1's library of games was much larger. The format difference also made the PS1 a more affordable option; while the two systems were at price parity their entire lives, PS1 games were on average about $20 cheaper than the N64's (though Nintendo's first-party titles still dominated the software charts because of their extremely high attach rates). Sony also learned from Sega the importance of aggressive marketing in the 90s and positioning themselves as the more appealing alternative.

The GameCube had the misfortune of coming after the N64 and running face-first into the massive juggernaut that was the PS2, which had already been out for over a year, as well as getting sniped from its other flank by the Xbox. It was the strongest competition Nintendo ever had to face. That generation's outcome was already settled before it got fully underway due to Sony maintaining the momentum they had gained with the PS1. Basically, it was Nintendo vs. Xbox in a race to determine who would take the spot of a very distant second place. Xbox ended up edging out the GC worldwide, mainly because of a relatively strong performance in the U.S.

The Wii U was just poorly marketed, to the point where many thought it was just a tablet accessory for the Wii. Looking at the early ads for it, it's easy to see how people could be confused about that. Nintendo tacitly admitted to this in their holiday advertisements leading up to Christmas 2013. Nintendo did do what they could to try to right the ship, but by then the damage had been done and they just weren't able to generate much interest in the system.

On the flip side, the Game Boy Advance stuck with the Game Boy name and it sold over 80M units in a very short time span, making it Nintendo's fastest-selling system at that time and is still one of the fastest-selling systems ever. So, playing it safe did work out for Nintendo there. It helps that the GBA was affordable, had a strong software library (including Pokemon, which was still near the heights of its early days), and had effectively zero competition in the handheld space.

TL;DR, Nintendo systems succeed or fail for the same reasons other systems succeed or fail. Games, pricing, marketing, the strength and nature of the competition, and even things like regional variations in consumer tastes all factor in.

The Switch 2 is filling its own niche, and as a fundamentally different experience from PS & Xbox it arguably isn't competing against them any more than their pure handhelds were competing with conventional home consoles. I doubt Nintendo will charge anything exorbitant for it at launch ($400 tops, maybe less). Nintendo moving to a single platform means they'll retain their all-hands-on-deck situation and therefore games won't be an issue (first-party titles being the main event on Nintendo systems since the N64). Having a simple "2" to make it clear this is a next-gen Switch means they've learned their lessons about messaging/marketing. While I doubt it will sell what the Switch 1 has, even that would have a 🦠clear explanation🦠 as to why, and even then I doubt it'll sell less than 120M units.

If Switch 2 is the name, they probably ran focus group tests to see what people thought of certain branding.

Even "Super Switch" or "Super Nintendo Switch" it's easy to forget that a lot of people of a certain age may not understand "Super = successor". Sure if you grew up around the Super NES or close enough to it but that was like 33 years ago now. A 16-year-old for instance may not understand "Super Nintendo Switch = Switch successor because remember Super Nintendo?".

The 9 could be in reference to the 9th 3d Mario game.

But no 16 year old is getting confused about whether something is a new system or not.

The idea that people can't tell the difference between different generation systems is way overblown (ie. WiiU did not sell poorly cuz people thought it was a Wii peripheral or whatever people claim, it sold poorly cuz it was terribly designed and didn't have compelling software).

Sure there may be some clueless parents who want to get a system for their little kid and they may not know what system is what, but that's about it. And it's easy enough with a couple minute internet search for even those clueless parents to figure it out.

Doesn't matter what Nintendo calls it. Everyone is gonna know it is the successor to the Switch. But given the fact that it will likely look nearly identical to the Switch, I think "Switch 2" makes the most sense.

I thought that way once too but I literally met my friend's son during the Wii U era and he didn't know the Wii U was the Wii successor, and he was even a pretty big gamer (PC, Playstation mainly) lol. 

You'd be surprised how clued out some of the general public and younger segments of the audience is. 

Well my point was that, if the consumers don't adopt the Switch 2 the way that Nintendo needs them to, they might not switch their internal developers to developing to solely the switch 2. It was just a hypothetical scenario that is possible due to the Yen being weak, and therefore maybe needing to price it higher + people not seeing enough difference between the two products other than the "2" on the back. In that scenario Nintendo and third party developers still focus on the Switch as primary platform and treat the Switch 2 more a pro model. The same game but with just better resolution and visuals. It's not impossible due to the Switches success, it might overshadow it's own successor.