This is a rare situation where Sony fans will support Nintendo because MS can never come out as the do-gooder. Never! ;P

No dude. It's the one thing the Wii u has going against it.

True enough, what's hanging me up I suppose is a fundamental flaw in the wii u's architecture to begin with.  A decent amount of the wii u's hardware is tied into making it compatible with the gamepad and its off tv play, I don't think anywhere near as much of the xb1's internal hardware is used to make it function with kinect.  It just represents a lot of wasted potential, whereas with xb1 the biggest difference would be in the voice commands, but I figure that could be remedied to work with headsets without too much trouble.

Just for the system it's better to stick with your defining feature. That's why I think MS made a bad decision concerning their overall message.

Microsoft because they're actually responding to what consumers want.

The Xbox One and PS4 have way more value for their money than the Wii U does.

Both. Kinect is needed for way less games than the GamePad.

How so?  Ditch the gamepad and all you have is a system that has about the same power as the 360 and ps3, but is more difficult to program for.  That means that it will cost a lot of money to make a game on the system (which has an insignificant install base) compared to its competitors.  The gamepad is the only thing really differentiating it right now.  

Besides, it would still need to have a controller bundled, so the most it would drop the price is by 50 bucks by removing it.  That isnt going to do anything for the wii u sales.  The problem is software support and removing the controller isnt going to help that.  

Obviously MS, though i do think they went about is pretty badly. Stating it would never be removed only to take it out a couple of months later is a sure fire way to piss people off >.
Still, the positives should far out way the negatives. Certainly a lot better that Nintendo's strategy of doing fuck all -_-

Nintendo has cut the price, but they've gone more the route of bundling in more stuff.

At launch $300 got you the basic set Wii U set (8G, white). And that was it. $350 got you the Deluxe with Nintendoland.

Now compare that to more recent offerings

$300 gets you the Mario and Luigi bundle. That's $70-$80 worth of game comared to Nintendoland being worth only about $50 at launch, maybe $20-30 new today. It's pretty common to find $25 and $50 given with each of these bundles too. You also now get a 10% discount for buying games digitally.

$330 gets you the Mario Kart 8 bundle. For that extra $30, you get an extra $100 worth of stuff (extra free game in addition to MK8 + controller + wii wheel).

If Nintendo had done nothing, you'd have to pay over $400 to really get into gaming on the WiiU today.

Yet again, people fixate on the gamepad when that's not the problem. Microsoft and Sony are in much closer competition than either of them are to Nintendo, so Microsoft MUST cut the price just to keep up with Sony.

The Wii U, however, is already the cheapest console and it is selling poorly, therefore we can assume that price is not the primary reason the Wii U is selling poorly and that a price drop alone would not significantly help The Wii U needs to remain the cheapest console for elastic customers, but unless Sony announces a $100 price drop at E3, price is not what they should focus on. Games are what they should focus on.

That, and the gamepad is still the Wii U's unique selling proposition. Without it, it becomes a generic underpowered console, and you may as well get a Wii if you don't already have one.

TL;DR: Microsoft and Nintendo are in completely different problems.