I say just ditch it for the NX. The gamepad is a huge drawback for me. Compare it to the DS4 or X1 controller it feels awful. If they do (for whatever reason) feel inclined to add the gamepad to the NX hopefully they redesign it in a way that makes it feel less clunky.

PS4? Lol. At this point catching up to PSVita seems like a pipe dream.

@OP - No. It would be utterly stupid at this point. Just ride it out, don't invest a single dime in it, don't waste any money, make the amount you know you're gonna sell at a profit, release the NX, stop the Wii U production asap and move on. If anything, update the gamepad so it uses more modern and cheaper parts and sell it as an alternative NX controller that allows Wii U BC and off-tv play of NX games. This way if NX becomes a success, they may actually earn something on the GamePad.

No, if Wii U sales are much better (not little) then there would be no need to realase the next console so soon, and ditching gamepad in this point basically wouldn't change anything.

That would done more harm than good. Yes, $200 Wii U would be sell little better, but in this point that basically wouldn't change anything. Do you realise how much Nintendo would need to spend money and resources on branding, marketing and changing all games that require gamepad!? They would loose more money than they would earn with ditching gamepad and Wii U would still be worst selling Nintendo home console.

Nintendo home console usually have life span of 5 years, so one year less dont change anything. Original Xbox also had life spain of 4 years and we all know how Xbox360 was successful.

If trying to sell the Wii U at a cheaper price is what the main goal is.
Then what if Nintendo released an all-digital Wii U? Because, while the GamePad takes up one big chunk of the console's production costs, the disk drive takes up the other huge chunk. 
Now I could go into detail about my opinion about the prospect of an all-digital NX system, but that's an argument for another day.
But if that's what Nintendo is looking towards, maybe they should try an all-digital Wii U just to test the waters. And maybe with all that space available as a result of no disk drive, they can increase storage capacity to around 500 GB. And it would cost somewhere between $199-$249.

I think it doesn't. Its only cool functionality is the teletransportation, where you can select the place you want to go by clicking a player's icon on the map. This is great, but doesn't "justify" anything. Aside from that, you can rotate the camera with motion controls, something that traditional controllers can do too. 

It also does it a lot better than traditional controls.

Plus, there's also the SplatJump mini game we play as we wait for battles.

Plus the short cuts to different shops in the hub world. Plus the Ink Strike special attack.

Yet none of them offer the great control scheme that Splatoon does.

Wii U Pro controller doesn't have gyro controls. Neither does the xbox one controller...

Welcome to the Nintendo subforum. The GamePad threads are to the right, just throw it in the pile over there.

It will not ressurect Wii U that is the point. It is way to late. The console is a commercial failure.

I rather they move on then be totally irrelvant. 

Most people swap their mobiles every 6 months. The Wii U had a good run. It had some great games time to move on. I think I already have about 40 games on it. 

You can indeed turn of motion controls for games like Splatoon and Star Fox, but I'd definitely prefer motion controls over just the Pro anytime.. and I'm saying this even though I thought that motion controls would be really bad before I played Splatoon..

Anyways, I don't think it's a good time because there are games that cannot be played without the gamepad