Nintendo's previous console, the Wii U, was a failure. Nintendo's new console, the Switch, is a runaway success.

These folks just bought a Nintendo Switch, and they're psyched. AP Photo / Koji Sasahara

That's a major part of the reason it has been so, so hard to find the Nintendo Switch for much of this year.

"When you're coming off the launch of the Wii U system, and then your next hardware system is Switch, it's a challenge to know how many we should be ordering," Bill Trinen, Nintendo of America's senior product marketing manager, told me in a recent interview ahead of the Nintendo World Championships in New York City. "What is the demand gonna be?"

The Wii U, released in 2012, has sold about 13 million units in its lifetime; the Switch, released in March, is expected to reach 10 million units sold by next March. Nintendo wasn't able to adequately anticipate that dramatic disparity in demand, causing supply shortages.

Indeed, the most important lessons Nintendo applied to the Switch come directly from mistakes made during the Wii U era — for instance, with ease of use.

The Switch's operating system is snappy and simple. Nintendo

"If you look at the Wii U hardware system, just the system menu itself — the time that it took to boot that system up, to get into gameplay — was something that was a frustration for a lot of players early on and actually became a hindrance," Trinen said.

The Switch, in comparison, is blessedly fast.

"It's three button clicks, and you're into the fun, so it's a really accessible menu," said Doug Bowser, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of sales and marketing.

As anyone who has used the Switch can confirm, Bowser isn't making that up — it's by far the fastest console available today. The Switch wakes up and shuts down more like an iPad than a game console, which makes it feel amazingly modern.

"With Switch being something that you can take with you, it made it really important that you could play it instantly," Trinen said. "That to me is an example of a direct lesson from the Wii U era, where Nintendo said, 'That's something we're gonna zero in on and make a dramatic improvement on.'"

Bowser pointed out another lesson that Nintendo took from its recent past about an issue that caused major problems for the Wii U: an inconsistent cadence of new games.

There were great games on the Wii U, of course, but there wasn't a steady stream of new games to keep people interested.

"We had a glut [of game releases] up front, and then kind of went dry for quite some time," Bowser said. "From a first-party perspective, at least, we were very intentional and deliberate about Switch. We launched with 'The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild,' which obviously was incredibly successful, drove hardware, and brought a bunch of new people into the franchise. And then followed that with 'Mario Kart,' straight through the series of games we've released since then."

Since the Switch's launch, Nintendo has released new games — including "Mario Kart 8 Deluxe," "ARMS," and "Splatoon 2," among others — nearly monthly.

"That's been a really important lesson that we've applied that seems to have worked," Bowser said.

An amazing-looking new "Super Mario" game, called "Super Mario Odyssey," is scheduled to launch on the Switch on October 27. Nintendo

Perhaps most importantly, Nintendo's demonstrating an ability to adapt — to listen to its fans and respond. It may sound small, but it's a crucial change for a company notorious for being tight-lipped.

"Our goal is to delight our players," Bowser said. "We want people to have access to our hardware, to our content, and have great experiences. So we actively read the market and try to understand what those trends are and make sure we're adjusting accordingly."

That philosophy is evident in the recent news that Nintendo is taking the NES Classic Edition console out of retirement after discontinuing it earlier this year. And it's embodied by the Switch — a console whose existence is essentially a response to the failures of the Wii U.

As Bowser concisely put it: "We are responding. We're listening."