Even going into this launch with a hint of how gigantic BotW was rumoured to be, I looked at the year-one Switch lineup and told myself: I've been through launches before, I know how they're paced, I know to fully expect as an early adopter that after the big launch game I'll put the system aside for 6-9 months before it gets interesting, and retreat to my backlog to fill the void. That's how it works; that's how it always works.
Then the Switch hit me with a Zelda that had the longevity of four or five other Zelda games put together, plus three online first-party entries (if you count MK8D, which wasn't new to me) that are already, historically, my most-played online fighter, my most-played online shooter, and my most-played online racer. And then there were the holdover arcade experiences like Graceful Explosion Machine and Puyo Puyo Tetris to keep me busy. And then the system hit me with that stupid August-to-October budget/indie run, which cemented the Switch as not only a PC supplement but (for certain genres) a PC replacement, and also caught me off guard with the ultimate unicorn, a good Sonic game. It's already my most-played dedicated device from any calendar year since I began to keep records.
I'm from that Wii U user base and traditional Nintendo core that never particularly cared if Nintendo platforms had third-party support or not; it was somebody else's problem that made no difference to me, and I have a PC for that. But it's made all the difference this year by keeping my system active from one big release to the next, and a large part of that is in how the third-party library actually caters to me for the first time, in a way that western AAA multiplats never did. The Wii was my previous benchmark for a great launch year on the first-party front (TP, Wii Sports, FE10, Super Paper Mario, Strikers Charged, Prime 3, and just beyond the one-year boundary, Galaxy). Like the Switch, it benefited from the deliberate late-life evacuation of its predecessor and the strategic decision to bump software to a new platform. But this time around we have a totally different environment where broad acceptance of digital distribution, the quality/quantity/availability of games in the $20 bracket, and Nintendo's successful liaising with small studios in a mature indie market (and notably, developers like Yacht Club and Image & Form that are a good fit for the core culture) have all come together to hold the back line.
All of these factors needed to converge at once, and unlike the 3DS or Wii U they were all in place from day one. I don't think it can be emphasized enough that the Switch has raised the value perception of what indie games are worth, against the tide of the mobile race to the bottom and the oversaturation on Steam, and that might actually emerge as the most important legacy of the platform's strong start.
It probably doesn't look all that different from past Nintendo systems if western AAA multiplats are your bag, though. Without the digital library in the $20 zone, and subtracting the extreme anomaly that is Mario + Rabbids, this segment just amounts to a handful of sports franchises that don't even look like they're doing all that well. But then again, I'm saying this before the big Bethesda ports have landed.