From business perspective, it's a terrible controller - not only it's expensive, it did not bring kind of experience that Wiimote managed to do with wider audience, and Nintendo put all their eggs into that basket.

As for

Only problem the gamepad ever really caused was its costs in materials to the overall console. But even that is a bad argument. Had WiiU not contained a gamepad and instead had beefier specs, it would still have cost about the same.

Meaning, we'd still have a $300 console that is being sold at a loss with no 3rd party support or sales. It still wouldn't appeal to the MSony crowd that only see Nintendo as a kid company and it wouldn't be in the price range or feature/game aspect to hit the casual group again like Wii.

Lack of 3rd party support for WiiU is combination of specs and user base problem (as said by certain developers themselves). Remove one of them (let's go with 1/2x PS4 specs instead of Gamepad) and SuperWii would have much better support.

Would it matter? I believe yes, nothing could be worse than current state of WiiU sales.


DISCLAIMER: I fully expect usual WiiU apologists/3rd party conspiracy proponents (they know who they are) to jump on this one...well, don't bother, I won't be answering to you.

I like the Gamepad, but the screen quality is pretty bad, so I have no reason to use it as anything other than a menu.

That is the solution I wish they had done. But that is not the angle Nintendo had planned on going. They wanted to attract the more core userbase and thus the only other option they would have tried was a more beefier system.

I couln't disagree more with that last sentence. Did you:

a) try Nintendoland?

b) had friends to play with?

This is as much of a blast to play that it was with wii sport when the wii came out.

Cost.
Lack of quality 1st party at launch.

Nintendo won't win with 3rd parties or catering to the MSony crowd. They need a low cost console with their games day one.

I actually like digital triggers better. Fuck with me.

Then use the setting to turn off the gamepad screen (most games have this) and/or use a pro controller. But frankly, you're in the minority of those who own WiiUs.

Off-TV is just better.

I don't see how its quality is bad. It looks great IMO. My TV does look better, but meh the games still look  very good to me.

I don't know, it might just be how the TV compares. My LED 1080p TV blows away my Wii U pad, and in comparison my tablet screen looks dull, colorless, and washed out. It's just not something I would use as my primary screen, not even close. 

The gamepad (especially the D pad) is amazing for many different types of fast moving action games, like the keyboard/mouse is amazing for FPS and real time strategy games.

I would not want to have to pick one over the other 100% of the time, when Nintendo brought the game pad along with the NES I would say they made playing sidescroolers and most other 2D games possible, without the slowish controls of the arcade joysticks (and it's much easier to hold in your hands) I am forever thankful for them to have invented that method of control for games.

EDIT: did not read the OP, well I don't own a Wii U in aprt because they probably sacrificed other specs of the machine to get this working, good for you if you like it... I find the trade off was not worth it.