The sad thing is that price was basically what I heard is the highest that Nintendo would even consider for the console, thus meaning that they were seriously considering selling it for less (there were several developers who were convinced a sub $200 price was going to happen). Looks like the hype and competition's pricing has given Nintendo the best price for them on it.
Granted there's more to it than that (you know, the quality of the games), but I feel almost ripped off on the hardware. So, they take the chips that they used in the Gamecube, do die shrinks to them (which should make them less expensive to manufacture, lowering their cost there), add a small amount of flash memory and a few other marginal components (wireless chips), and then even lower the amount of actual material they use to make a system, and then charge 2.5 times what they were for the Gamecube?
I have to give them credit though, its a very smart move. I'm not one to fault a company for maximizing their profit. I don't think its fair to act like Nintendo is really doing anyone but themselves any favors here though. This isn't even taking into account the money they're going to rake in from reselling (yet again in a lot of instances) old games.
My point is that, people try to make it sound like Sony and Microsoft are screwing the consumer selling their systems at the prices they are, which I'm not really arguing, however so many of the same people try and make it sound like Nintendo is a saint and is the only one that cares about the consumer. The fact is, none of them care about the consumer any more than any competitive business does. Their object is to make money, and so they make products that they think will allow them to do this.