Because the game was released simultaneously for both consoles and heavily marketed as a Switch launch title, and very few people owned a Wii U like you and I. It was a system seller, because the choice most Zelda fans had to make between buying a Wii U or a Switch to play the brand new Zelda game was a pretty obvious one.

The Switch, on the other hand, has sold very well, and its major Zelda games have been available for years now, meaning there's very little incentive for Zelda fans to upgrade at launch...not that I really think that's as big of an issue as the author does, though. And it certainly isn't surprising lol, who in their right mind would have thought we'd be getting a major new Zelda title just two years after ToTK? I'm more surprised that we aren't seeing a Mario title at launch.

As far as I can tell, you're not really disagreeing with the author's points here. Their argument, as I read it, isn't that the role-playing focus that players look back on fondly didn't exist, it's that it was a product of RPG culture and individual tables, not the system itself. It's a counter argument to people that say modern D&D is somehow a worse system for role-playing.

I do think it's a bit short-sighted of them to say that classic D&D by-the-books lacked non-combat elements based just off of the core rules, though. I'd be curious to see what the balance looked like in officially released modules and campaign settings of the time, since I think that would give us a better view of how TSR expected games to be run.