Its not the start that matters, it is the sales in a years time. Wii U had a good start too.
Everytime I see this, it seems some ppl dont remember how The Death of Consoles articles, narratives came hard n fast because of how bad it was selling early on. First month, maybe it looked good. After that the writing was on the wall pretty early on:
The Wii U is causing a slow-motion financial train wreck at Nintendo.
venturebeat.com
"To date, the Wii U has sold 5.86 million units of hardware"
Article was written Jan 2014, the Wii U launched Nov 2012, a full year before the PS4, XBO.
We know for a fact the PS5 has passed that number in approx 6 months. Series consoles might have too or are close to passing it.
It took until 2015, 2016 for the Death of Consoles narrative to go away. All thanks to Wii U sales.