A price cut or redesign could result in increased sales, but I doubt it would be enough to be worthwhile in terms of reduced margin or hardware design human capital opportunity cost. They're just gonna ride it out another year and a half.
It doesn't make much sense for them to run production runs on the old model and its prohibitive build costs. The amount spent on R&D for the smaller, streamlined GamePad would probably run less than firing up the old facilities and building new-old GamePads, especially if they plan to sell more than the initial 10 million deal...
We're not talking about a WiiU redesign, the console is already streamlined sans expandable storage or more USB ports.
Here's hoping that NCL and many others take note and do something worthwhile or it's going to be very grim for a lot of people...
This has been Nintendo's strategy for decades, they don't need to take note of what they have already been doing, lol. They have high-hitters, and they fund off-shoots like Splatoon or Xenoblade to expand viable markets. Neither of those is a "safe project".
Hmm...I don't know. Myabe it's just me but it seems more like a "Damn! Check out those Western PS4 sales! Quick, get something out that we can at least publish in the West for some of that money!" I may be very wrong though...
I think this may be at the root of the mindset. There is a huge western PS4 market and possible fledgling Japanese PS4 market. So they throw their chips behind the big beast even if the idea of selling to that western audience is... highly improbable. A huge chunk of the PS4/X1 market is FIFA/COD and nothing more.
Of course, I think many are throwing their chips in for other more-$$$ related reasons. The Vita/3DS are better bets locally for titles that will likely never leave Japan, and the 3DS is better globally.