They know that at this point dropping the price would not help the console to increase its sales significantly. The Gamecube dropped to 99 flippin dollars in its final days and that did nothing to save the console. Nintendo will rather keep the price as it is to maximize the benefits per console sold.

My original, day 1 purchase, Wii died a few months ago and I want to get a WiiU since it plays Wii Games... but not at $300 and not used.
If I can ever find it NEW at $200 I'll buy it on the spot.

Yep. One smart Nintendo done was realising the Wii U was price inelastic. Whether $250 or $300 there wouldn't be a huge difference in its end life sales, so might as well keep the profit margins as high as possible and ride it out to the end.

Yep, all thanks to a glorified $180 handheld display that relays info to the actual console. If Nintendo had gone with a simple controller and saved themselves the agony of having to come up with ideas for the controller, I think Wii U would not only be cheaper but it wouldn't be at 13-14 million units. Self inflicted wounds Nintendo...

I am not sure. Didn't the 3DO cost more at the end?

Probably

I don't see them dropping the Wii U price, will try to make the most out of it before the Switch comes out. They aren't even really bothering to advertise it for the holidays

I want one new for cheaper.

What...?

Wrong, they don't do any price cut because they can't, since they would lose money due to the costly tablet controller and it's futile do it at this point...

I'm fed up with that phrase ( No price drop because it will still sell horribily ) ! it's a  wii u and Nintendo not dreamcast and Sega ( that's about first party games, I could mention another comparison with different console/company of today...)  and if a price drop means 3-5m+ more sales in relation  with the sales level of the wii u,  of course you will do it! Check all over the internet, people are begging for a cheaper wii u and complaining justifiably about it  being  expensive/overpriced.... ( 199 $)

Wii u with a price drop could sell 18-19m +  and by extent it would move more software, wii u games have an outstanding attach rate!  That's horrible for you but it's a substantial improvement from what is going to sell eventually! So If Ninteno was able to do it, they would have done it, even if the effect wasn't spectacular...

Don't forget Gamecube, one  big price cut in 2002 and and another one in 2003... It sold 22m and 212m software ( 9.7  ratio ), perhaps without them it could sell half of it with the fierce PS2 competition, remember, that gen was when sega forced to abandon hardware buisness!

Nintendo dropped  considerably the price of gc two times, because they would still make enough profit, as it was extremely cheap to manufacture unlike dreamcast in that period and wii u now...

With great attach ratio (over 10) a 100 dollars price cut would be totally recovered from the 600 made of 10 games (they would still net 200-300 additional profit per HW sold). The reason they don't do it is exactly GC, they already saw that there is little value in dropping the price of the HW.

Most people that say they would buy the HW if it was 300 are lying, and when properly accounted the HW bump wouldn't be worth it.

can't believe this thing is still 299$.

Iwata was both a genius, and complete moron.