I wasn't actually aware the holiday Wii U bundle was priced at $299, for some reason I thought it was higher.
This is purely opinion/conjecture on my part, but I doubt that the perceived savings on the inclusion of Nintendo Land amounts to anywhere near that much, while similarly SM3DW at least, will be relatively old by the holiday - although I don't know how well the price on the title has held. MK8 will still be relatively new.
Comparatively, I would think the brand new Assassin's Creed title would be easier to calculate savings.
The perceived price is probably still lower for the Wii U, although they'll probably be appealing to different market segments anyway.
At any rate, the nominal prices are still surprisingly close.
This works on the assumption that Nintendo isn't also going to do something for the holiday season - a season in which it is launching Smash Bros. and the Wii U is profitable per sale.
I mean, this is a "shots fired" moment from the Xbox One for the holiday season and we're talking about "perceived value" for the price points before we know what Nintendo is going to do this holiday season. Wait until those Black Friday deals hit and we see the Wii U for as low as $200 or for $300 with 3 or 4 games for free. I mean, the only thing we know for certain is that the PS4 price is unlikely to move due to the position that Sony is in. For all the talk about how "Bad Nintendo is doing", they are nowhere near bankruptcy, while Sony (from what I have read)... if htey don't turn things around they are a handful of years away from that. The PS4 is selling really well for them and is still selling well to this day without many games that you would think sell a system. It's riding off the momentum from last year hard and they will bank on that for another Holiday season so they don't lose a lot more money per unit sold, then next holiday is probably when we could see price drops and better game bundles. Sony just doesn't have the financial clout to match this or one up it. If they do somehow do it out of the blue, I'd be shocked. No matter how many units they sell, they would be hurting themselves more. They just can't really afford to counter this.
Nintendo, for all the woes, is sitting pretty. Just based on a war of attrition, in 10 years it is far more likely that the Xbox and Nintendo consoles are still rocking than the Sony one... though the PlayStation brand would likely get sold off before Sony would go completely under. A new company might keep it going strong. Hard to predict.
But in terms of the Wii U bundles, we're forgetting that new bundles are going to obviously exist this holiday too. A smash bundle is too obvious. IT hasn't been announced, but they could be saving it for a Black Friday type deal. They still have the MK8 bundle which they could run more of and discount further, thus making MK8 a rather nice system seller this holiday too.
I just think it's an interesting prospect comparing where teh companies are at to what they can do this holiday. If Nintendo does NOTHING, then I may swing towards the value of the Xbox One over it (I already own both), but I doubt any of us really think Nintendo isn't going to do something - either price dropping or giving us more games with the console sale. They tend to do something every holiday. They price dropped last holiday I believe and the console is already profitable, so they can probably afford to do it again (well, they can afford to do it. They have the bank to do whatever they want for at least another 20 years).
