If Nintendo could price discriminate perfectly, they most certainly would, but there are negative externalities (i.e. bad PR).

I've wondered why retailers don't do the following: set MSRP to $X, but charge $X + $Y, but donate $Y to charity, and advertise the fact. This is basically a variation of bundling, except people aren't too happy about that, either. It's easy to be emotional about greedy scalpers or greedy retailers (that forces me to buy $Y of crap), but most people don't think of greed and, say children dying of cancer, in the same train of thought.

Because now they get to be on the news with a bunch of stories talking about how hot their new product is.

Exactly. I wouldn't have even known they released an official NES-raspberry-pi-esque product otherwise.

Because the value of the free marketing they've just generated dwarfs the value that's being captured by scalpers.

> Why doesn't Nintendo just raise their prices to where supply equals demand?

"Raise prices" is not the solution to all of life's problems.

these things would've cost next to nothing to make, and they figure they can sell a large enough volume at a low price that they'd net more than upping the price slightly and selling substantially less.

Hindsight is 20/20.

Bad press.

Yep. It would be very bad for the brand if the device came out at a very high price initially.

Nintendo has to pick a price for the long term, ship with it and stick with it. Short term profit opportunities would have a very large long term cost.