WiiU: 0 core Mario titles, 0 Metroid titles, 0 new Zelda titles
Wii U had Super Mario 3D World and New Super Mario Bros U. Both of those are core Mario titles.
Wii: 2 core Mario titles, 2 Metroid titles, 2 Zelda titles
Three core Marios, you forgot Galaxy 2.
And look at the attachment rates for those games, ex NSMB Wii:
Mario Galaxy 1: 11%, respectable but not fantastic; the previous main Mario title, Sunshine, carried a 30% attachment
Mario Galaxy 2: 7.5%, significantly weaker still
Metroid Prime Trilogy: 0.6% Laughable, despite the motion controls being accounted the superior method of play
Metroid Prime 3: 1.8% Also laughable
Twilight Princess: 7.2% Second best-selling Zelda of all time, worst selling core IP launch title ever released. This is one of the things that concerns me about using a Zelda game as a core launch anchor. Not Zelda game has cracked 8m units lifetime.
Skyward Sword: 4% pathetic attachment rate for a Zelda. It barely outsold Majora's mask despite having three times the hardware install base.
The only core titles that sold on the Wii, and had an attachment rate over 10%, was Mario and Smash, the rest were bloody Wii Sports/Fit titles and Just Dance. In other words, a casual console.
WiiU... poor launch library. Wii..launched with Zelda. And from the looks of it N is keen on remastering WiiU titles(MK8d, Splatoon2) for the Switch....so I expect to see Smash and other first party titles ported over pretty quickly in the first year.
And if any of those titles were wide draws, they would've moved hardware. Ex a few cursory titles and a boatload of shovelware, the third-party situation on the Wii was no different than the Wii U, yet it sold over seven times as many consoles. Why? Because the non-core IPs sold it to casuals. There's a reason that Wii Sports has an 80% attachment and the next nearest competitor is Mario Kart at 35%.
I'm not entirely sure about the possibility of success for the Switch, but I see parallels with the Wii. In all honesty, I don't really care for the console-portable hybrid proposition, id have been happy with an Ouya type device with a pro controller or an updated Wiimote+nunchuck.
If you see parallels then you ought to be terribly concerned. Based on my own research, the core Nintendo audience accounted for about 20 - 25% of the Wii sales. That 75 - 80%? That's the casual market and it isn't coming back. The only thing that the Switch can hope to do is to convert most of the Wii U audience (if the generational attrition rate holds steady, it will convert around 70% for a total of a bit over 9m) and cannibalise the 3DS install base. They'll have
some measure of success, but the gaming philosophy of the Switch and the 3DS are not the same beyond the situational aspect. Best case scenario, it draws that same 70%, which is around 43m units. Combined, you get 52m, which on the face of things seems like a net positive until you realise that that success, and the probably lack of 3DS successor during this generation, would represent a 30% loss in hardware sales by volume generation over generation, with a resultant loss of software titles sales as well. At which point Nintendo will have essentially a dockable handheld device, in a world where handheld sales are
haemorrhaging generationally (154m DS vs 61m 3DS for example), once again relegated to a rapidly decreasing niche market, especially with their domestic audience where portable gaming in increasing but dedicated handhelds account for increasingly smaller percentage; in the West, dedicated portables are decreasing in sales.
This is not a renaissance, it's a Hail Mary. It
could work, I've never stated otherwise, but it doing so is against the numbers. Wouldn't be the first time or the last but, like the Wii, it would be a dangerous outlier.
But personally I don't mind PS4 level graphics, as long as the games are vibrant, immersive and nails the world they are in. And at that, Nintendo are usually amazing at getting the most out of their consoles. Unfortunately, everybody else does not... Which is likely also why I will skip the Switch at first and see what comes down the road. I won't pay 400$ + Extras to be able to play ~3 games.
