I dunno. I think $299 but the Nexus will not come with some things the other phones have. It will not have moto Zumocast or Samsung Kies which lets you connect to your pc over the air. It will not come with Motos event controller or whatever that thing is called even though you can get something similar from the market. It does not have beats headphones or sounds system. It will not come with an SD card even if you won't need it with 32G. You will have to install software so that it can be accessed by Macs. It will not have NFL football or those other apps.
So maybe Verizon is thinking that ordinary customers won't want to pay $299 for this phone when they can pay $299 for phones that can do all of these things out of the box.
Not a big deal for me, but I can see customers thinking this way.
Most likely the $199 is a mistake or was the price for one day if it was released on Black Friday.