I don't care about Bloomberg. I was already thinking, considering the price, that they were probably making a huge margin on the system. That's simply my opinion, anyone can and should think whatever they like.
Eh. Anyone can and should think whatever they like within reason.
"Margins" can be manipulated with any kind of expense. For a simplistic example, 20% of every Switch OLED sold can be ear marked to pay an associated marketing expense, and legally reported as a -20% lower margin. Similary, the cost of the new assembly line or the R&D designing the console can be paid for with a per unit margin deduction. The problem is these are massively front loaded expenses, and pinning this burden on the first 5 million units doesn't really represent the cost of a product likely to be produced in the 100 millions, and sold for 5-10 years. These are the most rudimentary examples for how you could claim a loss on a $350 device with a $150 BoM, certainly experts in the field would know loopholes that go several layers deeper.
Of course how they choose to count development costs can be... amortized (??? sorry if that's the wrong term, reaching way back to Accounting classes here) in different ways. All the things you mention--R&D, marketing, production--are rolled into the cost of each unit in different ways, which is what a lot of people in here have been trying to explain: the cost of the hardware is more than just the BoM + shipping.
The numbers very well could be, and I believe often are, frontloaded. And of course if they continue selling the system over time it could (and they hope it will) reach higher profit margins per unit. Then again, so will the base Switch. The reason companies frontload those numbers isn't to obfuscate costs or make consumers think they're getting a better deal than they are. In fact, given that all of that has to be done before a system ever launches, it's more accurate to report costs on the first few million units. But the main reason a company like Nintendo might frontload the numbers is that success isn't guaranteed. If, for example, you put out hardware that ends up being another Wii U and you've planned to (again, sorry if this is the wrong term) amortize over the next five years and 100 million units, you're in big trouble, and your investors will and should cry foul when you retroactively apply those costs and a bunch of money "disappears."
But anyone who understands the bare basics of business accounting (and I have only a fuzzy grasp at that) already knows these things, which is why we've been rolling our eyes at the drama queens wringing their hands over the "Nintendo charging $50 for a $10 upgrade!" outrage. It isn't our fault that people even more ignorant than I am want to jump in the conversation, and it's not Nintendo's responsibility to correct every consumer's misapprehensions. What they are responsible for is making sure that their investors, who might well read the innaccurate (or at minimum misleading) Bloomberg piece and start buying or trading expecting a better return.
Which they did. *shrug*