Nintendo should definitely release it 2011 or 2012 at the latest. PS3 and 360 are going to eat up market share until the end of this gen.

It's going to have a tough 2011.

PS2 hardware peaked in its third calendar year.

Wii hardware peaked in its third calendar year.

360 will most likely peaked in its 6th calendar year ( it might do better in 2011 , who knows).

PS3 numbers in its 5th calendar year are its highest so far.

It seems to me that the numbers do show that when the HD makers say this gen will last longer they do know what they are talking about and that they do not have that many issues convincing consumers to buy their product 6th year into the gen...

2012 - 2014 depending on how the next price cut (maybe down to $149 early next year) will affect sales.

If a price cut doesn't help sales significantly they will announce the successor next year and relase it in 2012.

So? Market share isn't nearly as important as profit, and Nintendo knows that.

No, selling more units later in these console's lives can easily be attributed to them being too expensive initially and (in the case of the XBox 360) too unreliable. After all, wouldn't you expect sales of the PS3 to be stronger when it is in the typical price range people associate with gaming consoles; or the XBox 360 to see a sales increase when the extended warranty on RROD expired?

I believe the Wii has 18 more months of solid numbers before a replacement can even be announced, Nintendo will focus on 3ds during 2011 plus it's got Zelda, Pikmin 3 plus I'm sure there will be a few surprises.

I personally think the Wii 2 should release earlier than the 3DS. Just by looking at the sales, the DS is still doing monstrous sale while the Wii is slowly stagnating.

Well the fact that HD consoles hardware sales keep increasing clearly shows that this gen isn't over for them...

No, it just demonstrates that things are going better for them then they were initially ...

Whether you recognise it or not, by the end of 2012 console sales of this generation of hardware will probably be lower than 66% of their current level; and the vast majority of these sales will be replacement systems or additional systems purchsed to play a handful of games. Piracy across all systems will be dramatically higher, more people will be gaming on other devices (iPads, PCs, etc.), second hand and budget games will represent a larger share of game sales, and new games will be selling far less units and be far less profitable.

You're looking at the market the same way fanboys were looking at the market in 2004, thinking "look how great things are TODAY, there is no reason to release a console in the near future"; where the reality is that if you look into the near future there are a lot of significant problems that face these consoles.

Part of what you either fail to see or accept is that Nintendo is not going to sit around doing nothing and allow the XBox 360 or PS3 to "steal" users; and they're (most likely) going to respond with something that excites the market. Being that no console that is the successor to the market leading console has not completely crushed the competition when given a significant head start, I doubt that Sony and Microsoft are going to twiddle their thumbs and give Nintendo a 12 to 24 month head start which could translate into a 40 to 60 Million unit lead.