The 'primary' model that they're pushing at the moment is $350. That's what people think of when they look at the Wii U, even though there's a less expensive model that is technically being sold.
Folding down some/all of the Deluxe pack-ins to the non-Deluxe model, presenting that as the 'primary' version of the console, and dropping the price of that new model to $250 would be effectively very similar to a $100 price drop, without incurring much more of a loss than a basic $50 drop.
They'd be free to have an actual "Deluxe" model on the market at $300, as long as they're careful to present the $250 model as the default.
The psychological barrier, cost-wise, that they're facing that prevents people from seeing the console as a good value is "$3xx", not relative pricing. It's enough to make people balk in a way that they wouldn't for a "$2xx" console.
(The non-pricing barrier is that it's viewed as having an anemic software lineup - which is the real reason that a price drop hasn't made sense up until this point, and still won't for another month or two - That perception has largely been true up until now, but will be significantly less so by the holiday season, as they've got a reasonably big released lined up every month up until then. Ideally, they'd want to plant a price drop right in the middle of that, with enough of a marketing push that everything comes together into something of a 'relaunch' of the system.)