I disagree with this. To the general public who didn't give a crap about Wii U or even know what it is Splatoon and Mario Kart come off as brand new games. Mario Kart is a huge IP recognized by casuals.
Zelda will never happen of course.
While I agree that MK and splatoon would be good titles to pack in, I see this argument on GAF a lot.
Wii U bombed horribly. Technically stuff like MK did not. Mario Kart 8 has shipped 8 million So the whole "no one knows these games exist" is hard to say. Within mario kart, MK8 has sold more than SMK, MKDD, MKSS, iirc. And it's ~2 million behind MK64.
Additionally
n64 games (from wiki)
1997 GoldenEye 007 8.09 million[5][6]
1998 The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 7.6 million[7]
1999 Super Smash Bros. 5.55 million[8]
GC: (from wiki)
Super Smash Bros. Melee 2001 7.09 million[1]
Mario Kart: Double Dash‼ 2003 7 million approximately[2]
Super Mario Sunshine 2002 6.31 million
It's shipped more than most of these games' original releases.
Including Melee and OoT. All of these games were big in their day though
Would people have argued, "Wii needs a Double Dash and Sunshine Port because no one played it on GC"? No, people would say, everyone already knows about those games.
I've seen the sentiment a lot on GAF that essentially no one bought splatoon or MK, so a port is almost like a brand new game, and I disagree. MK's ceiling is clearly not 8 million, but still. It's disingenuous to make that statement.Considering it did more than games like smash, and kart, and even had a tiny run in the public light with death stare luigi. These games are still definitely worth a port given the gaming environment though.