The 3DS is dirt cheap and has been for a long time, I don't think low price makes as much of a difference as people think. 

Obviously you want a decent price point but I think it's an overrated concept, if pricing a system correctly was all it took to have success, there'd be lots of successful platforms, GameCube, Dreamcast, Neo Geo Pocket, and others among them. 

It has. 20-25% is a huge decline.  I apoligize that I was wrong on how dramatically it had declined, but still, losing 20-25% of sales all the while your competion's sales have generally increased is clearly not good.

Coming up with new arguments as the conversation goes on is called "having a conversation". What you call moving the goal posts is nothing more than presenting further evidence to argue my point of the obvious decline of Nintendo's sales. That was my original point. From there I provided additional evidence to back up my point, showing how from console to console, Nintendo's sales have declined. I further elaborated on that point by providing further evidence, going so far as to point out where I feel Nintendo lost it's grip as an industry leader - during the life of the PS1.

During this time, it was you that countered with differing ways of obfuscating the fact that Nintendo's sales have generally declined, first by arguing that Nintendo's sales have been generally constant, then when that was demonstrated to be false, arguing that the decline overall wasn't actually that bad, and even going so far to cherry pick certain fiscal years to fit your narrative. In the meantime, I have been comparing like to like. I have compared the sales of Nintendo's latest handheld and home console with the sales of Nintendo's handheld and home console the last time that Nintendo was clearly dominant. The same argument could easily be made if you compare home console to home console and handheld and handheld. The fact that I combined them was essentially irrelevant. However, you then took advantage of the fact that I combined the two, ingnoring the point I was actually making by doing so, and decided to obfuscate sales data time and time again by combining sales of various Nintendo consoles, and cherry picking annual sales ina  dishonest way to argue a position that is obviously incorrect.

Remember, it was you that suggested that Nintendo's sales actually outstripped that of Sony's, by combining the sales of two devices and comparing them to the sales of one device, yet you suggested that I moved the goalpost by countering your point by making what is obviously a fairer comparison that being - PS1 sales vs N64 sales over their first 3 years in which the N64 initally outsold the PS1, followed by PS1 dominance. Don't accuse me of moving the goalpost by directly countering a point that you made.

Like I said before, try and pay attention to what is actually happening.

Let's not kid ourselves, this generation has been very bad for Nintendo.

Not only is Wii U obviously a catastrophe, but 3DS will be their worst selling handheld besides the Virtual Boy, and won't even outsell the loser of last gen's portable race.

Now, that's not to say Switch is doomed; it could do quite well if they price it reasonably and provide it with a consistent stream of desirable software. But let's not pretend the last few years have been hunky dory for them.

It was never stated that everything is honky dory, obviously having the first annual losses in company history, a poor performing console and the lowest handheld shipments since the mid-90s are not things to be proud of.

The point was that even though things have been bad for the last few years, its not nearly as bad as some are making it out to be. Its just another case of people shouting that Nintendo is doomed despite things looking to be turning around.

My point was that reality lies somewhere in the middle; Nintendo is neither doing as well as some fans claim nor as badly as some detractors claim.

My point was that reality lies somewhere in the middle; Nintendo is neither doing as well as some fans claim nor as badly as some detractors claim.

The other companies have increased? I'm pretty positive Xbox One is going to come nowhere close to 360 sales, PS4+Vita is going to fall short of PS3+PSP & PS2. Where is this increase that you're talking about?

Like I said earlier you can split up the data basically anyway you want, generation vs generation or every 5 years since they began the April-March fiscal year or total annual shipments. They all come to the same conclusion, that Nintendo's overall hardware business is not in a massive decline (which was your original argument) unless you compare it to Wii/DS (which you claimed was a fluke).

Overall Nintendo has remained relatively stable over the last 25 years with a few expections.

I would say it's probably closer to the "poor" side. 

If I said 5 years ago that the Wii successor would sell 14 million total and the DS successor would start petering out around 60 million .... Nintendo fans would be in complete disbelief and shock. Those numbers are shockingly on the low side for Nintendo. 

Even in that period between 1998-2001, the Game Boy (mostly the Game Boy Color) sold like 50 million hardware units in three years, so in a modern context, the portable sales Nintendo has today are a very large decline from any period they've had since the creation of Pokemon in the second half of the 1990s. 

If you want to say "you can't count the DS because of certain reasons", ok, but people don't realize from March 1999-March 2004, between the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance, even before the DS, Nintendo sold 105.82 million portables. 

In the last five fiscal years Nintendo has sold 62.69 million portables (this includes both 3DS and DS). That's more than a 20% drop off. 

This is why I think realistically 60 million might be the upper roof for the Switch, and getting even there could prove to be tough for Nintendo. These days their handheld division is selling more in the range of 12-13 million in a good year and 8-10 million in a more average year, the days of 20+ million shipments are long since over. The peak 3DS shipment for a year was 13.95 million. 

See, you just take an interpretation of what I say, make a nice little straw man out of it, and then try your best to light it on fire. Adorable.

I was making a point that the sales of the Xbox and Playstation home consoles is substantantially higher than the likes of Sega, Atari, etc. Aka, the sales of their competition has increased while Nintendo's sales have decreased over the years, aka, Nintendo has much more susbtantial competition now than they ever have, and the sales show it The home console market has grown in the last couple decades overall, yet Nintendo's piece of that pie just keeps getting smaller and smaller. As you've stated many many many times, this has been somewhat buoyed by Nintendo's handheld performance, but even that train appears to be running out of track.

Hilariously though, if you want to look at a stable platform over the past 20+ years, that title easily goes to Sony's home consoles. With few exceptions, they have consistently sold at least 18 million. In fact, between FY97 and FY07, the only year they sold less than 18 million home consoles was FY05 at 16.2M. Sure FY08 to FY11 they only averaged between 12 and 16 million, but since FY12 they've been back to 18+ million. If you're not keeping track, that means that in 20 years, Sony's home consoles have sold at least 18 million 75% of the time. That's actual consistency. now before you try and make a mountain out of that 4 year period of less than stellar sales, let me remind you for a little perspective - Nintendo would be delighted if the Switch sold a 12 million average over the next 4 years.  That alone should tell you all you need to know about the decline of Nintendo over the years.