But it won't.

This reminds me of the removable buttons patent

I have never agreed with you more and I will likely never agree with you more than in this post. I'll just bask in this.

There's no way of really knowing right now. Besides what exactly is wrong with that layout? I think it's the most functional and probably the most practical. 

Having to have two screens just so you can have a touch panel is incredibly inefficient today, it costs more money, takes up size in the unit (so you have less heat dissipation for your chipset), makes the system heavier, and eats battery life even in games where it does practically nothing. 

It doesn't have two screens and it doesn't have enough buttons to offer BC with the N3DS, DS, or play NX games since the console will need to have a controller with a screen and have enough buttons to play Wii U, and all VC games. A single screen handheld, or console, is 100% not happening. There's no way of really knowing if you're thick and blind.

We've gone over this already. The two screens are important for more than just the touch panel, and it most definitely is not inefficient. It's important for BC, cross compatibility, a more efficient HUD, and better inventory management, and a less ubstruction to the gameplay because you aren't constantly blocking the primary screen with your fingers. It's still cheap, two screens are still small enough to be portable and comfortable, the system will be more than light enough, and the battery life is more than adequate. Pros vastly outweigh the cons.

this would be placed horizzontally and would be most likely thicker so that it's more comfortable to click. I don't agree, even if it was circular I think it would be pretty ergonomic, but they might choose a scallop-like style with grooves for the fingers, we've seen with the N3DS that Nintendo thinks about this stuff...

People still think that patent means it'll only have 2 buttons? All of you look at your controllers, the patent means the L and R buttons will be replaced by a L and R mouse wheel like buttons, you're still going to have your triggers and host of other buttons as well. The diagram shown is not the actual controller, it just means two of the buttons will have added functionality, think of it much like the analogue sticks being clickable.

I think it might work if it has much smaller number of steps for full cycle than mouse wheel, which would give it both chance to have larger flat surface per step and more stable steps.

I think that a "pentagon"-"octagon"-like controller would be optimal, still I would be interested in seeing a spherical one

It'll definitely be useful, that's for sure.