That's a non-existing problem because the combo of home console and handheld doesn't mean that it will be a single device, but rather that separate home console and handheld devices will feature the same operating system and development environment.

No, no, no. You sound like a man who has been thoroughly beaten by life. You need to suffer no more, just embrace the magnifiscense of the StewiePad.

NX won't be anything like the PS4 and Vita. The most obvious difference is that the Vita didn't receive any notable first party support after the PS4 had launched. The Vita was pretty much worthless on its own.

Who exactly is this controller supposed to appeal to, anyway?

The core crowd won't touch it with a ten foot pole. The casual crowd aren't interested, as the Wii U already demonstrated. 

People always say "oh, Nintendo fans will get it no matter what", but many Nintendo fans who've stuck with the company for decades are expressing disgust at this design. And it's not like the Nintendo crowd alone are enough to carry a system, again, as Wii U already demonstrated.

Not to mention that the idea that Nintendo fans will put up with anything fails to take into account the countless fans they have lost over the years as a result of moves like this. Even the most dedicated fans eventually reach a point where they simply refuse to take any more crap.

Like the Wii U, the only gamers this will entice are a continually shrinking group of Nintendo diehards.

Again, all this is assuming the leak is legit.

My guess is it's meant to appeal to kids and by that I mean specifically this generation of kids who are being raised on smart devices from birth. 

I mean since the pad is probably going to be expensive if this is the design, I think they could even just put a cheap mobile chip in there so it could even run Android games, developers could add in analog support (or not), and Nintendo could sell a lot of Android apps through their own eShop. 

Maybe that's the rationale behind it. 

It's not an entirely terrible idea, BUT they cannot sell this thing like a Wii, as in they can't sell this system strictly on the controller. It's novel, but it's nothing that mindblowing, Nintendo would have to absolutely nail every other design element of the system and then they're going to need the miracle of a break out hit software too ... even then I think they're still in kinda tough.