are u realy thinking the gamepad costs 70$ to make?  they packed all the r&d costs in the calculation of the first   consoles, like every company would(wll not sony, they had to pay of the cost for years with ps3)

i would say the gamepad costs 25$ to make, a bit more than a controller, not more. it has no expensiv tech inside...

What if they make a redesigned console/gamepad that cuts manufacturing costs by $50+

dont think its going to drop anymore, thats unless if the other consoles drop theur price, in that case nintendo would have to follow

i am not sure how uch the gamepad costs to make, but journalists say its something like 79 dollars
http://www.destructoid.com/cnn-estimates-the-cost-of-wii-u-s-parts-to-be-228-249435.phtml

also i dont see a huge difference if nintendo was to reduce the price to 200, the sales wouldnt drastically increase and also nintendo would be sellin at a big loss, at must i beleive they would be willing to reduce the price to 250,but not now, maybe almostat the end of this year the production costs would havedropped enough to justify a price drop

How about both?

Yes, as much as it will deepen their losses, they need to sell hardware before they can sell software. I never understood why Nintendo (the company that said that a dedicated console will only sell if it is priced low enough to attract people who want to experience its software) built the Wii U to be so expensive. This system does not have the software to attract the male teen-to-young adult audience that Sony and MS are going after and it does not have the price to attract more casual gamers to get its software.

At this point I feel Nintendo should call the system Wii 2 (a redesign of the console and Gamepad would also; on the console side they should redesign it so that it does not resemble Wii so much, on the Gamepad side they should shrink it so that it does not cost so much), bundle a Wii Remote Plus + Nunchuck as well as Gamepad, bundle Wii Sports Club and Game & Wario (on one disk) or Mario Kart 8 (on a disk), and sell it for $250, and sell the existing stock of Wind Waker HD systems and NSMB & NSLU at $200. That is the only way I see the system building a respectable install base. Also, in order to appease current customers, they should do another Ambassador Program like they did on 3DS.

A Redesign should have the following goal:

- Cut out the gloss case, it attracts dust and finger prints, and a glossy finish is more expesive than matte.

-The two most costly components of Wii U are its MCM and the Gamepad's screen. Hence, they should try to shrink the MCM (combining it into a SOC should reduce prices and consumption like it Xbox 360 and PS3); sharing the Gamepad screen with another product (2DS with its single screen) should help reduce costs.

-Evaluate things like the price of the disk drive, flash memory, ports (on both the console and Gamepad), and see if cutting or changing some of these compoenets will help reduce costs. 

I can't understand how you guys think that cutting the price AND bundling Mario Kart is a good move. That's foolish. The 2D Mario bundle is awesome enough. If you cut the price significantly, you want to sell Mario Kart separately, so that you get some of that lost money back! Preferably you bundle the game with the Wii Wheel to drain even more money from us.

That's what I'd do - cut the price by $80 (just like the 3DS) to make the cut really significant, but not hurting as much as $100 would. The bundle would have 2D Mario with 2D Luigi ads all over it, so that people buy the DLC ;) Mario Kart is bundled with the Wheel, so that suckers give us more of our money back