Just how much does the gamepad cost anyway? Is this why it still isn't sold separately?

That would be really bad for the Wii U.

I believe it costs over $100. I don't know the exact amount.

They just need a redesigned gamepad to sell more consoles. And the loss will be caused by the overdue price cut, you cannot sell the extremely weak PS3-level Wii-U at the same price as PS4 and X1 which might both receive price cuts at E3.

That's the problem though, people aren't getting what's actually happening and just going off a mistranslated comment that Iwata never actually said. 

It means basically there shouldn't be anything dragging down Nintendo's profit that they already made through 3 quarters of this fiscal year. Yet Nintendo is expecting something to drag down their profits, that seems to point to Wii U hardware production resuming again in the 4th quarter. 

Could but I doubt it. If it is the case, we will hear it in the interview so I wouldn't jump the gun just yet

Sony and Microsoft's decision to go with off the shelf parts looks like it was the smart move for both them and consumers. Whatever cost savings they incur they can pass to the consumer in terms of lower prices. In another instance of Nintendo wanting to be different, it seems to have backfired...again.

I would probably guess about $80 or so. They sell replacements for north of $100. 

Nintendo likely cannot get a break on the price of the controller because they're not selling enough systems to get suppliers to budge. That and the screen being a resistive touch panel that virtually no one else uses makes it probably more expensive than a multitouch screen even though resistive is (I believe) older tech. They can't just go to any supplier and get that screen, but if they were using multitouch LCD they probably could pick and choose from tons of vendors because so many have to make them for tablets. 

Yeah I'm thinking this is one of the cold, hard lessons Nintendo learned the hard way this gen. They probably will switch over to ARM CPUs across the board next time around (ditching IBM's dated CPU) for one. 

But Sony and MS are also selling at a much higher volume which likely gives them far flexibility in negotiating component prices or getting a break here and there. If they're making their suppliers a decent amount of cash, the supplier likely doesn't want to lose their business and will budge on certain things if asked. Nintendo unfortunately isn't in that position and some of their components probably can only be made be a very small number of vendors. 

I'm sure that Nintendo's handhelds will stick with ARM CPUs, but I'm not so sure about consoles. They'll probably go for x86 CPUs for their consoles like Sony and Microsoft are doing right now.