The problem with the thought that the basic model sold less then the deluxe so price isn't a problem is that they sent out the basic model so gimped it can't even hold more then one full retail download. Yes, we know the Wii U can have external storage attached but Nintendo seems to forget a fundamental tenant of console gamers... majority of us are kind of lazy.
I mean if we weren't a bit lazy, more people would have switched to PC gaming and Steam by now instead of hooking their consoles to the internet to play our online gaming. We play consoles for convenience of not having to adapt our hardware to match or keep up with the latest or most recent graphics card. Not to mention, the basic doesn't even come with a game so buying it and then a game pretty much equals the deluxe without more memory and for early adopters that price discount they offered.
Dropping both models (or discontinuing the Basic and dropping the Deluxe) by $50 or $60 in time for the recent fall games would benefit in getting people to try to get the system AND a game. Heck, they could remove Nintendoland and just have the 32 GB hard drive version by itself at $299 and they would still probably see a small surge in sales. You are selling at a loss but the fact is with the poorly thought decisions made for the Wii U and its release you did yourself no favors and are going to be eating this loss until you build up the costumer base.
You are going to get sales this fall with the new games, but you could get more by biting the bullet and bringing the only practical version of system's base price closer to $300 or less.