Nintendo may give some *hint hint, wink wink* statements about the Wii's eventual successor at E3 or at one of the late summer/fall trade shows, but absolutely nothing concrete until early next year or the following E3.  Don't expect a new Nintendo system before Nov 2012.

In fact... read my lips... new Nintendo console goes on sale in Nov 2012 with an MSRP of $299, and is roughly as powerful as a 360.  Yes, I'm THAT confident that this will be the case... you heard it hear first, folks!

I think it will be more powerful than 360. But the true important "thing" about Wii succesor will not be power.

If by more powerful, you mean in the same way that the Wii is techinically "more powerful" than the GameCube, then yes, the Wii 2 (or whatever its eventually named) may indeed be more powerful than the 360, but not by any discernable means other than general tech specs.  Visually I expect Wii 2 games to be on par with current gen 360 / PS3 games, but then again, this IS Nintendo we are talking about here, and we know how much they love to skimp on the hardware to minimize cost and maximize profits, so nothing is guaranteed.

But I agree that the most important feature of their next console will not be HD visuals, but rather how they take the next step in regards to the innovative gameplay that the Wii established.

I stick by my prediction that we'll hear something at E3 and see a 2012 release. As for the article it never said expect it soon it said that they couldn't know for sure that Nintendo would not release hardware soon. THQ also stated that if Microsoft or Sony released new hardware soon that the games could cost over 100$ at retail, indicating that consumers might not be willing to buy expensive games and developers might shy away from developing such expensive content.

In the end I think it could be like the PS2 launching two years ahead of 360 and PS3. Nintendo's console might come in 2012 and Microsoft/Sony's might come in 2013/14, the question is could Nintendo really take enough market share in two years to take on new hardware from Sony or Microsoft.

In all honesty my prediction is a 75% chance Nintendo will announce new hardware this E3 and/or release the new console in 2012. A 24% chance Nintendo will hold off until Sony or MS make their move. And a 1% chance Nintendo will not reveal a console this year but will launch in 2013 before MS or Sony launch if they choose to launch in 2014.

In other words Nintendo will either reveal their new console for release in 2012 I'm pretty sure of it.

Pre-Wii Nintendo historically put out a system on par with or even more powerful then the competition, but they have made some major design mistakes with their console too. 

For example, the SNES was overall graphically superior to the Genesis.   But the N64, while technically having more horsepower than PSX, was crippled by cartridges which limited textures, cgi capability, sound quality ...etc. 

The Gamecube too was more powerful than PS2 in most areas but had two major flaws, the Disc size (1.5 GB on GC vs. 4.7 GB on PS2) and the amount of main system RAM (24 MB on GC vs. 32 MB on PS2). 

All of these flaws made games harder to port.

When Nintendo releases their next system they need to make sure it has enough RAM, a storage medium with same capacity of whatever Microsoft uses and CPU and GPU adequate to make ports of future games possible. 

There's no point in Nintendo making an HD system if it's not going to have future HD games.

To add to the points a lot of people made already:

It's not only Nintendo wanting the 3DS to take the spotlight this holiday season. They also have to have enough software for the Wii 2 launch period. Currently most of Nintendo's first party stuff is making one or more 3DS games (Zelda, Star Fox, Animal Crossing, Mario Kart, Paper Mario, 2D and 3D Mario just to name a few).

Even the development teams behind Nintendogs and Pilotwings would be under lots of pressure if they were to release their first Wii 2 games earlier than holiday 2012.

I still fully expect them to reveal a Wii Slim (probably called "Wii Plus" to stay in line with Wii Fit and the Wiimote) around e3. They could keep the price at 200$, make it prettier and add some internal storage. That should be enough to keep sales high in late 2011. Guess they tried to push a Wii slim as far back as possible but sales are down massively now and there's no reason to believe sales of a redesigned Wii would drop before the Wii 2 is out.

Didn't they say that their dev teams were focused on 3DS games? what do you want the new console to come out with?

This can't be for sooner than Q4 2012.... and with longer dev cycles... maybe 2013... but the wii will be old by then.

Also, I think it would be cool if Nintendo dropped a new sku alongside the release of Zelda, a Gold Zelda edition Wii console would be awesome. If this gold wii was the Wii Plus you hypothesized then, that would be a sale for me.

I think Nintendo would hold off either way until 2012 to announce their next console regardless if that means a launch for late 2012 or even  2013.

I always thought "Blast Processing" was real.

On topic, if Nintendo were to release their console early, making sure it has enough RAM, a good storage medium and on par power could be hard. Knowing Sony, they could release a system that could EASILY top Nintendo in all of those catagories (they did it with the 360, Dreamcast, and NGP). Power-wise, this seems like a lose-lose situation for the reasons I just stated. On the bright side, If Nintendo launches early, it may catch Sony and Microsoft off guard.

I know its fake but this is cool.