Would Nintendo make a Wii U SKU WITHOUT the gamepad

[Alby_da_Wolf]

errorpwns said:

Alby_da_Wolf said:

If they do it, the tablet will become almost totally useless, because 3rd party devs won't support it anymore on new games, as they wouldn't run on the tabletless version. Yep, they could make tablet support optional, but most of the times they won't bother, and 1st party support will still be there, but it will become half-baked most of the times, because otherwise 1st party games would be gimped on the tabletless console, and Ninty can't afford tarnishing its biggest franchises.

If the game supports off TV play then it already could support gameplay without the gamepad. 

Sure , but this is not the problem: the model WITHOUT gamepad can ONLY support the gameplay without it, so to support both SKUs and not make gamers with the cheap SKU feel an inferior experience, and also to avoid spending too much developing a feature that not everybody will be able to use, new games should have the single screen mode as the main one, and most of the times, to save even more money, it would be the only one. OTOH the gameplay with big screen + gamepad is currently the main one, because it's THE distinctive feature and selling point of the console and it's available to every Wii U gamer.
It's the same problem of split audience that WiiMote Plus and Balance Board have on Wii, Move has on PS3 and Kinect has on XB360, and it cause devs to support them with just a minority of games or with not crucial optional gameplay additions in them, the only difference is that this time the split audience would be caused not by adding a new feature later or by making it an optional add-on, but by removing it. Opposite process, same result.