So price the Vita low and with the new price commercials show the cross-buy and remote play perks. Not to say they wouldn't do this bundle but 500$ is eating way too much into profit margins of a company barely turning it around to move dead hardware.
Alright, I'll take this and your first quote to try and articulate it to you better:
The purpose of the bundle is to move vita hardware. If they are gonna take that big of loss why not just price the Vita at like 120$?
There are two SKUs being combined here, one for $399, one for $199. Both are profitable as is, and have a margin Sony cuts into whenever they drop below MSRP for pricing. Combining them means they can use both margins for both devices combined and give a more substantial discount.
Dropping $80 off the $199 Vita alone is a lot,
lot harder than cutting $40 off a $599 package. Do the percentages. Putting these two devices together is also a great way to put the product, tangibly, in front of people in a way that says "these go together." The PS4 is also selling like a sonufabitch right now, so this is also a sign that Sony is trying to co-opt that success into some extra Vita units moved.