Breath of the Wild was a good step on one aspect of open world

Lol. As if BotW is comparable to what the Ubisoft game (for there is merely one by now) or other open world games have been doing up until then.

destroyed by not knowing that open worlds still need actual content.

Lol. It's ok to not like a game, but claiming that a game on which so many players sunk 100+ hours into didn't have "content"? Come on. xD

It's a terrible game.

Lol. That's why it was incredibly successful and attracted immediate copycats, right. \s

And it can't be "innovation that sells a system" on the Switch when it was a port that was already available before the Switch.

What are you talking about? BotW released with the switch. It was also available on the WiiU, yes. But that only proves my point that it was a system seller, since people bought it with a switch, instead of getting a cheaper WiiU.

Try getting a physical copy of big, successful TV shows now. Many of them don't exist at all. Some movies never get physical copies.

I constantly see them in my library (e.g. house of dragons). Also, again: book stores continue to exist.

Nintendo provided a handheld that just met the bare minimum threshold to play their games.

Thats not how console releases work. Games usually get technologically more advanced as the hardware ages. TotK is way more advanced than BotW. Also: I'm not following your point here.

The hardware wasn't expensive to make.

It is, especially the cartridges. Not as expensive as the Playstation, or XBox, true. But that's because Nintendo on principle don't sell hardware at a loss. Still, the markup is waaaay lower than with the mini consoles, which were my examples for collector's items.

That's pure maths: if you focus on a small demographic (like collectors), you need a high markup. E.g. MtG is only lucrative, because the cardboard is so cheap. The switch doesn't have such a high markup, so they need to go for mass appeal. If collectors would be Nintendo's main source of revenue, they wouldn't have bothered with the switch lite, which is clearly aimed at the opposite of collectors.

There was no meaningful up front R&D cost

The main reason why the supposed R&D cost was so low was because Nintendo fuzed their hard-held and console team. They had a lot of experience with hand-helds (and innovation in that space, for that matter).

Their "system seller" wasn't even a new game.

Again: you're talking bullshit. (Also: they had a second system seller with Mario, which arrived half a year later)

It's always expensive to port to Nintendo consoles because they always use ancient technology.

And you're refuting my point... how? Why am I getting the feeling that you care less about a coherent argument than dunking on Nintendo?

Giving up legitimate access to a game until you buy it again is a big cost you're ignoring.

You're ignoring the budget point and that all digital purchases will inevitably be void in the future.

You're also ignoring that the cost of a bad experience goes way above the couple bucks involved.

And you're gnoring how rarely that happens.