Wii U will sell very well this holiday, with or without advertising. Because it has now many and the best exclusive games. It sold well last holiday too.

Advertise.

if and ever the Wii U drops in price, that's when i will be buying. There are not enough games for the system to justify paying $300 for it.

Price cut with normal advertisement

I say neither.

Instead, I say that they should be smarter with their money, and come up with a small advertising campaign that intentionally goes against the norm - something that will capture attention, and hopefully something that gets the news media talking about it (thus providing free advertising).

Meanwhile, rather than cutting the price of the system, they should boost the perceived value of buying now. Perhaps they could announce a deal that works like this: every person who owns a Wii U by the end of this year will receive a free game of their choice. It simultaneously rewards those who have already bought the system, and gives incentive for people to buy the system in the next two months. The free game would be available at any time to the end of 2015, thus giving people who are interested in Zelda Wii U, or other such titles, extra motivation to buy now (and in the meantime, they could probably encourage people to try out games like Hyrule Warriors, which is an exceptionally good game).

Beyond that, there's also this point - to give a $50 price cut (or equivalent per region) now, if we suppose that 1 million Wii U systems would be sold by the end of the year (mostly thanks to Smash), that's somewhere of the order of $30 million of money lost (depending on taxes, etc, in each region) relative to what it otherwise would have been. If we suppose that each of those people would have bought the system in 2015, then there's not much of that that works out to be a big financial benefit to counteract that cost.

So $30 million. That would be enough money to fund the development of three decent-sized games. Alternatively, it could part-fund six third-party exclusives that could fill up the 2015 lineup quite nicely - they could get Treyarch working on a more traditional shooter franchise, for instance (no need to spend huge, since it's single-system, and the engine already exists - in fact, how about Treyarch making the next Battalion Wars, with both first-person shooter and strategy elements, using the Upad for issuing commands to your comrades?).

Simply put, I think there are better uses of about $30 million than a price cut or regular advertising.

I don't think they need a price drop but a cheaper option, current bundle is Deluxe + Nintendo Land + Super Mario 3D World at 300, they should release a Deluxe + Nintendo Land at 250, many people will want to buy the console for Smash (and some for other smaller games like HW and Bayo 2) but the only option right now is expensive if you are not interested on the games offered on the bundle.

When you have the cheaper option available, then advertise and include those smaller games that make another fellow gamers hesitate.

Sure, there's a lack of options, I get that but 3D World and Nintendo Land are essentially free pack-in games that don't cost a dime. For example, buying a Wii U deluxe alone would run $300 and buying a Wii U with the bundle is $300. 3D and Land would run an extra $120 if they actually cost something. There's always the basic model for those who just want to play the games.

They are not free pack-in games, they actually come as physical discs and they have a cost of opportunity, sure is a reduced price over the regular retail cost, but putting both games on the bundle must cost Nintendo a few bucks and the possibility of selling the game as a stand alone, removing 3D World and offering the deluxe for 250 U$ is a smart choice because it gives the impression that the console is cheaper without actually losing money.

The basic model is not available anymore, so there is no cheaper option.

Sega.........saturn

I've never honestly outside of Sega's MTV style marketing of the early 1990s seen a marketing campaign actually turn around a systems fortunes, and really the Sega marketing worked primarily because they had Sonic, which was something and fresh to counter Mario with.

Advertising a product that people don't want in the first place doesn't magically make them want it. There are 160+ million PS3/360 owners, Nintendo making another PS3/360 class system and getting crappy third party support on top of that, simply does not appeal to a lot of people.

The market for the home console is all in the West nowadays, and it's all the core gamer segment. Casuals went off to mobile and the Japanese aren't interested in consoles period. Nintendo basically made a console that was banking heavily on two audiences IMO that don't want a home console anymore.

Sega had a big marketing push for the Saturn in 1995, but it didn't do zilch for the system.