Cool people buy both.  Yeaaaaaaa.

/currently can't afford either  =(

Same. :P

yeah i will probably end up buying both. I currently own 1 Dsi, 2 ds lites, and one psp.

Well, I'm quite sure that if Nintendo had known just how insanely, mind-bogglingly successful Wii would become, they'd have priced it higher. Probably not at $400, but $300 seems like it would've been very plausible. It's all about perceived value. If a consumer thinks something's unique, they're willing to pay more for it, no matter the objective facts, like how Wii was basically a GameCube 2.0 in raw graphical power. Its games and controls made it unique, so consumers wanted to have it.

It won't.

At $199, they would be even harder to keep in stock than the Wii for its first year on the market. Even the DSl was pretty hard to find during its first year and was subject to hardware scalping on Ebay. And while I'm sure console flippers appreciate the business, Nintendo doesn't gain anything from this.

Nintendo has no competition for next gen handheld gaming devices other than the mobile games segment (which like it or not, is still erroding sales from dedicated handhelds and independent software development support); if they are limited by manufacturing yields, it's in their best interest to ask as much as consumers are willing to play until supply can meet demand. 

Nintendo already has a two tier product line structure in place as the DS isn't going anywhere, so it's not like anyone has much reason to complain unless first and third party support for the platform drops straight off a cliff within the first year that the 3DS is on the market. 

i was expecting something along the lines of "because fans demanded a more powerful system!" but not.... this bullshit =s

The best thing Nintendo can do..... 3DS with Ocarina and Star fox Remakes for $249.99.

I think they would keep the price the same.  At $250 the Wii was a good value compared to the HD twins and Nintendo knew that people would want extra controllers for party games.  You could buy 3 more controllers and still be cheaper than the competitors and Nintendo makes money off each controller sold.  With the DS, Nintendo can't make more money off peripherals like the Wii could, so it makes sense to raise the price a little. 

They definitely could have sold it for $299. And they are probably kicking themselves for not doing so since they couldn't very well change the MSRP after release. But then again, demand and popularity even caught them by surprise considering it took them the better part of 3 years to ramp up production appropriately.

At $400, it would hot have seen the same rates of adoption since non-gamers with a casual interest in something they heard about on the news or played at a friend's place just don't play that much for a gaming console.

Well, what's stopping us from dooming all consoles?

It kind of worked on PS3. The prices dropped a lot, likely due to the amount of dooms it recieved.