I worked at a gamestore (think Gamestop just without the name, we don't have these in our region mainly because our chain is here) from early 2008 until a few weeks after the Switch launched, let me just say this: the actual power and capabilities of a piece of hardware are very rarely an important factor when customers make their choice. I'm of course only talking about the customers we got in our brick'n'mortar store, don't get me wrong a big percentage of customers were actual hardcore gamers, in fact, I'm pretty sure the average customer there plays more hours a week than the average NeoGAF visitor does, just... You know, they play less informed and I would guess a lot of the "better informed" gamers buy online or wherever the price is cheapest, and that definately wasn't us.
What they believe to be the most powerful console, yeah, that did seem to matter a little more... But to be honest, it usually sounded more like them trying to convince themselves. I mean, for example current gen I heard talk about superior performance more from Xbox fans than Sony people and a little thing to consider here: we sold like 1 Xbox One for every 20 PS4's (and about 0,4 Wii U's, the numbers are completely made up, but they do feel about right) and of course also they were obviously wrong in their beliefs. From my first day at the job until the very last one, most customers were cocksure PS2 was the most powerful home console of its generation, so yeah, there's that.
For the most part the only customers talking about specs and making any kind of sense were PC gamers, of course as a platform when talking pure power it has always been king so they were usually talking about their own specs... Super interesting. Also, they hardly ever talked about games, a special breed those PC gamers still visiting physical stores.
So yes, the games, exclusives! That's the real driving force behind system sales, right? Right? Well, like the first year or two of PS4 & Xbox One I would have given that crown to MS easily, as I saw it they had way more console (pretty important distinction here) exclusives than Sony, most exclusive things worth playing on PS4 were actually PS3 games, meanwhile Wii U had a fairly decent line-up of real exclusives (and of course, zero third party games, that too). Hardware sales went the opposite direction though and not even a little bit.
And now we have the Switch. As a home console? Worst performance on the market. Oh, yes, the innovation! Hardware really is just an evolution of Wii U with three BIG upgrades:
- Doesn't have a name that confuses the f*** out of its audience.
- Doesn't look like my first gaming device by Fisher-Price.
- Actually portable.
Exclusive games? Going by Metacritic, Mario is a recent topnotch exclusive no doubt about it, rest of top three are Wii U games, rest of top ten is playable on other systems. Also f*** BC, that's a first for Nintendo, right? But look at that little system go!
... And I didn't even mention the Wii yet, specs were plain silly, sales numbers pretty nice, it would have outsold the Wii U holidays 2016 for sure if it was still being produced and that's just insane (it didn't sell a whole lot besides the holidays last couple of years before that though).
My point is just that after almost a decade working at a gamestore I still have no clue why people buy what they buy so I really doubt OP's theory is correct without changing "many" into "some".
