I think  bad sales for a Nintendo handheld console  ( at least for the first years ) or lower than expected/desirable  is more right , 5m in 5 months isn't bad sales in general, if you want my opinion.

Official prices for PS4 and XB1 are $299 and that want be changed in March, and it seems that Switch will have official price of $249.

Also your comparison is bad because Wii U had official price that was around $50-100 higher than PS3/Xbox360 official prices (still does), while Switch will have lower official price than XB1/PS4. So actually most accurate comparison would be that Switch is PS3/Xbox 360, while PS4/XB1 are Wii U, if we talk about price comparison.

Are you from Australia? haha

249->169->199

March '11- August '11 - July '12

They slashed 3DS price in August, sales skyrocketed, but Nintendo lost money ( blame it on the expensive 3D effect )! Nintendo launched immediately 3DS XL  the next year for 199$,  essentially increasing  the price of 3DS ( manufacturing cost of the XL version was the same the smaller one ), sales were steady  and 3DS hardware became profitable! For the story, Gba sp was released two years after gba , ds lite  launched two years after ds...

Nintendo went overboard with the  price drop...

No worries. Wasn't 100% sure myself

Most likely yes, the base version.

Could be wrong, but pretty sure that 5m figure was thanks to a great start. After a while, they were actually bad. That's what I member chewbacca again, anyway.

 i'm just saying that 5m sales in five months for a newly Nintendo handheld console is bad but these sales in general isn't!

I mean it would be great if wii u/psv had 5m sales in their first five months, if they had been released in a non holidays period of course, like 3DS!

Although, ( as you say ), from the 5m, the 3m were launch sales...

I get it. Not trying to take anything away from it. I'm just trying to explain why it got such a huge price cut and so soon (that was the point I was arguing about). It wasn't because 5m was that bad but because after the first few months sales were lower than acceptable for Ninty.

So basically

$249.99 - Switch w/o game, 32GB storage

$299.99 - Switch w/Splatoon 1.5, 64GB storage

I really honestly don't see the $250 model selling much. Like the Wii U Basic Set and XBox 360 Core (Tard) Pak, no one is going to bother with the lower end SKU.

So the price is really $299.99.

In stores I still see the Wii U for $299 (with a game, I don't see console only available).

If Switch launches at $299 with a game would that be the first time a company's old console and new console had price parity when the new one launched?