Animal Crossing. Did Mario Kart 8 sell more? Yes. But Mario Kart isn't a game you buy a system for. It's a game that goes with any Nintendo system the same way that something to drink goes with any meal. Animal Crossing got a ton of women to buy the Switch during Covid. That gained Nintendo a ton of blue ocean customers that had lapsed since the Wii. I honestly think Pokopia will do the same for Switch 2 and go on to sell over 50 million copies.

Exactly this. MarioKart 8 was on Wii U and NS1, yet only one of these two systems was greatly successful. If MK8DX was pivotal to NS1ms success, then why didn’t Wii U systems move for its entire 3y run following the launch of MK8? And it’s not like BotW where the system had literally been discontinued by the time the game released.

It was the fact that it was both portable and a home console. I dont think there was one particular game, as Nintendo has many many IP's that sell insanely well. Don't forget SMO is the highest selling 3D platform of all time. That's no small feet

Probably Zelda but man, that system really had mojo all its own, similar to the way PS2 did years prior. It had the right form factor, the right games, right vibe etc. One of those lighting-in-a-bottle systems where all things converge seemingly at the same time. Nintendo should be proud.

Both BotW and ACNH were huge when they launched, but Mario Kat 8 Deluxe contributed the most in the long run, alongside the Switch's hybrid nature

Yeah, as few already said, nothing beats that Plague Inc. game, aka COVID-19.

But as for actual video game, I'd say BotW- it's Skyrim of a sort moment for Zelda fans and wider mainstream audience, for all the good and bad.

Of the three, Breath of the Wild.

Switch was a success even before Animal Crossing and COVID, though these compounded its success.

Mario Kart 8 didn't save Wii U, and Deluxe isn't different enough to warrant giving it credit for SW's success.

Open world Zelda was bound to be a big hit for the time it released. BOTW released on Wii U too, but if you didn't have a Wii U (which most people who bought the game didn't) and you wanted to buy BOTW, then it made more sense to buy a Switch to do so, since it had a future.

If Breath of the Wild released in 2013 for the Wii U, the Wii U probably would've been a success as well. Probably nowhere near as big as the Switch (or even Wii), but probably SNES-level lifetime sales, with a longer lifespan than in our time-line. It might have been framed as a failure compared to Wii, but still successful as far as Nintendo would be concerned as a company.

The Switch and MK8D would have been massively successful regardless of BotW. The Wii U failed because it was expensive, weak, stationary, had a relatively poor game library, and Nintendo was still supporting 3DS which was still getting all these Pokemon games among countless other titles.

BotW obviously contributed to its success, but not nearly as much as MK8D. MK8D by itself is also insignificant when compared to all the combined factors that made the console a huge success. Wii U wouldn't have sold tens of millions more units if BotW was released exclusively on it. Instead, the game would have failed to exceed 8 million copies sold, because the console was fundamentally poor and nothing could save it.

Deserved so or not, BoTW caused a major impact in the market. It became the first killer game that moved Switch units.

Animal Crossing and COVID. This is where sales really soared.