Some people want the same for xbox .just gotta live with it :P

They'll likely cut out the legacy silicon from the Wii-mode in future streamlines of the console to cut down costs. There's simply no way to shrink that old legacy chipset and it costs them in raw production.

Lately Nintendo has put in features, both in consoles and handhelds, that are not used at all or very poorly (second screen, 3D, NFC, TWiii). It is as every new idea they have at brainstorms should be realized in the hardware, but then they do not have the tenacity to fulfill the features possibilities.

Yamauchi was also a ruthless negotiator too, I'm not sure if you could strong-arm vendors like this anymore ...

He forced the NES component makers to renegotiate their component prices right before the system launched, they protested wildly but were effectively blackmailed into accepting Nintendo's terms because they needed the contract, lol.

The SGI deal for the N64 was already a remarkably cheap deal for hardware of that performance, Tom Kalinske at Sega wanted the chip badly but Sega's Japan division was already working on the (disastrous) Sega Saturn so he was overruled. But even there Yamauchi forced them to bring down the price on it before launch so they could sell it $199.99 instead of the previously agreed upon launch price of $250 (granted some of this had to do with a delay).

The original GBA screen was supposed to be a lot brighter, but Nintendo switched to a cheaper darker screen at the last minute. As a result though the system was virtually unplayable in anything other than direct light. Konami's Castlevania game especially was problematic for being too dark, but Konami had designed the game on the brighter dev kit screen that they assumed would be in the final version. This all led to many people modding their GBAs with lights. It was quite a nice cottage industry until Nintendo finally released the backlit GBA SP.

Nintendo being between a rock and a hard place is where I prefer them to be. Consoles sold at a loss? Good. It gives them more incentive to crank out games since that's their bulk money maker.

I think you hit the nail on the head with the text I bolded 

The fuck? Sure TWii is useless and 3D is arguable, but second screen is hardly "not used at all" and NFC is in part for the multibillion dollar franchises of Skylanders/DI/Amiibo that are soem of the few things that sell well on the WiiU that aren't Nintendo limited.

Welp Doesn't look like there will be a price cut then.

Skylanders/DI don't use the NFC chip in the Wii U controller though. They have a seperate base, so that people don't have to pay for that as a hardware cost.

I get some people like the second screen, but I do think Nintendo needs to start making more mainstream design decisions. You can't handcuff yourself to features that don't drive system sales just because a few people like it. 

I'm sure some people would've liked for example backwards compatibility on the PS4, or a LCD screen on the PS4 controller, but the fact is Sony made the right call by nixing those types of ideas and instead simply making sure that money went instead to features that benefit the entire userbase (better chipset) and kept ancilliarary costs down, so they could offer consumers a powerful system and a fairly reasonable cost from day 1. 

How many 3DS games really couldn't work without the dual screen instead of say a single screen touch panel layout?

How many Wii U games really are vitally connected to have a giant screen on the controller and simply would not function at all without it? 

How much has Wii backwards compatibility helped the Wii U?

How many people chose to buy a Wii U because it consumes only 33 watts of electricity?

More #'s, less speculation please.