Wii U's price will be a lose-lose for Nintendo no matter what.

[Chark]

Slimebeast said:

We mustn't forget that it's a huge advantage to launch first in a generation.

If it's only $300 at launch it will become a huge success.

Even $400 is reasonable because it doesn't need to sell more than 10 mill in its first year, and by the time PS4 and X720 come out at $400, the Wii U will have dropped to just $300.

Consoles are much more likely to drop in $50 increments, and price drops are less likely to occur on a yearly basis at the beggining of its life cycle. They are mostly timed around market trends and the ability to reduce costs to produce. If the Wii U is a less powerful system then they will most likely opt to keep their pricing sheme as long as it is under that of their competitors. Pricing equally to a competition with better tech could prove disasterous if done for an extended period of time. A Wii U price change will depend highly on the competitors launch prices. For example, the 3DS, though I would argue its original price point should have been $200 and still $200 today. Witnessing a sales slump and with Sony's Vita launching at $250 they had very little choice. Right now it is impossible to tell whether the Wii U will cut their price in correspondence to their competition because we do not know the exact price of any 3 of the machines.