The XBox 360 Arcade model is regularly selling for $150 bundled with games and Microsoft is likely still breaking even or turning a profit. 

It is not really a "tablet" being that it is a dummy device that doesn't contain most of the components of a tablet ... It is essentially a controller with a relatively small, relatively low resolution touch screen. While I would expect it to be more expensive than a controller to buy (due to accessories being high margin products) I don't expect it to have that significant of an impact on the price of the system.

1. it still stands that if the price is to be competitive, dont expect the wii u to be a whole lota more powerfull than the ps360 if it even is more powerfull.

2. it will still have a gpu and a processor and a touch screen, however low end it may be which will still equate to it being more expensive.

like i said, competitive pricing = same ballpark in terms of power when comparted to the ps360, more power = more expensive.

how hard is that to understand?

Not necessarily.   It depends on the vendor pricing that the MS and Sony are receiving for their old hardware.  If Sony and MS are the only customers for those componenents, prices may not drop very much at this point and newer technology can actually cost less because of bulk rate manufacturing.

This is why you can buy a 1 TB hard drive for the same price as an 80 GB hard drive.

Actually, no.  The tablet screen won't ahve a GPU and processor as the data is just a video stream from the Wii U.

Yep, this guy is right. It's all speculation at this point but most sources seem to indicate the Wii U is more powerful than the PS360, as expected. No need to jump onto the hate bandwagon, guys. 

now, wouldn't that be kinda disapointing. i'm no techie but wouldnt it still need some sort of processor to translate the touch on the touchscreen? or could that be done through the wii u itself?

now, if its just a screen and the video streamed from the wii u, the rumored one tablet per wii u capacity makes sense now.

Nah, I've been more dissapointed before.

It's all streamed from the Wii U.  However, the 1 Wii U tablet per console thing is a financial decision, not technical.    Nintendo already stated the Wii U could stream to more than 1 tablet at a time.  But it's the costs to consumers for buying more than 1 tablet controller that is at the heart of their internal debate.

There isn't much more processing required to determine where a touch happened on a screen than is needed to know that a button was pressed ...

From a cost-effective perspective it is very good that the Wii U controller doesn't have significant processing power. For the cost to have a single stand-alone controller Nintendo can probably increase the processing power of the Wii U console to support 2 to 4 controllers. The unfortunate side effect is that, since all controllers would share resources, even if the Wii U supported more than 2 controllers few games would ever support more than 2 controllers.

I rarely disagree with you, but I wouldn't completely make that assumption.
We know that the WiiU is limited in the main display if the padlet is being used for heavy graphical display. Multiply the padlet number by 2 and it could significantly affect performance, probably more than Nintendo is willing to bend to.

It's obviously all handled by the system, and games will take the resolution given the conditions of resource usage, but I'd bet that for technical reasons Nintendo preferred to avoid limiting graphics even further in the step-down scheme in a hypothetical case of 2 padlets, just my opinion.