Yes, IMO, that's the paradox of using NURBS modelers, generating a mesh that's "polygon app friendly".

It is very difficult, if not impossible...

Typically I use NURBS generated objects as "statics" in my scenes; buildings, furniture, pretty much anything that isn't animated or doesn't require clean topology.

Another option is to load the resultant mesh in to Silo 3D or TopoGun and recreate the hi-res NURBS object into a smaller, all-quad topology. Unfortunately, that just feels like doing extra work to me but it's certainly an option (and mostly the reason why a tool like TopoGun exists...)

-Will