I found some information indicating that development of the next generation Wii is further along than anyone suspected. It will be called the Wii HC ; high capacity?, hard core? Some inside Japanese humor?

Apparently stung by criticism that their console was too casual, they have pulled out all the stops to make it the mother of all Hard Core, Bad Ass machines.

See stolen video of the Wii HC in action:

OK. Now I had my little joke. But seriously, where do you think those inscrutable Nintendo wizards will take us next? And when?

Here’s my personal speculation. Based on a desire to keep the casual gamers AND to lure back/away more of the other kind, and with vast resources and great momentum at their disposal, I think they might:

1.       Release their next console early, probably early enough to beat Microsoft.

2.       I t will be HD, of course, with a solid state hard disk, and refined motion control. It will have its own on-line gaming without friend’s codes etc. but with an age restriction.

3.       It will not replace the Wii which will continue in production at a reduced price and marketed specifically towards the sub-teen and distinctly casual demographic.

4.       The Wii 2 will have full backward compatibility and will be able to play any new non-HD releases aimed primarily to the Wii 1. This way developers do not have to invest in HD development for that market.

5.       Using dual layer media all new HD releases will also be playable on the Wii1 (at lower resolution) except for mature rated games which will not be playable on the Wii1. This means that parents can know that their kids can still play safely on a Wii1 without detracting from a more mature experience on Wii2. Crossover games would be released on dual disks but the Wii2 version might have some additional content.  Anyone with an older Wii1 that cannot read the dual disk can choose  to get a Wii1 only disk, an upgrade, or trade in towards a Wii2.

6.       Nintendo will go out of its way to reassure their huge Wii1 base of continued support and not push the upgrade in any way. Those that want it will damn sure get it anyway.

That’s what I might do if I ran Nintendo. What about you?

The Wii's success has made this argument redundant. It will not be released anytime soon.

Hm, may be it's still possible to see next Wii more like updated hardware (Game Boy -> Game Boy Color?) than entirely new system.

Its probably already in the works, but we wont even hear about it till probably 2011 - 2012, that is unless the Wii starts to completly fail and they have to drop the price to $99 just to move units

As for what it will be, no one knows cept for the people making the machine

But people have spoken. They Do Not want Hd graphics or most of the thing's in the second post. Hard drive might be an option but other than that I do not think it will happen. Edit At least til next gen.

Here's what I'm thinking:

Nintendo will not price drop. At all. Sometime around 2011/2012, Nintendo will announce that they're discontinuing the Wii, and selling the Wii Plus, which has full BC, comes with Wii Sports Plus (which includes all the wii sports games), and costs $250, and they'll be making a profit off each unit sold. This way, they don't have to worry about the old system eating into the adoption of the new system (Which I think is one of the major problems sony has right now). Then they'll do a weird soft launch, where they rely on the love of the Wii to push the system out to gamers, and slowly shift the development of games over to Wii+ as the base grows.

Microsoft and Sony have different SKUs of their machine sometimes with fairly significant differences. Why not Wii and Super Wii? It means that game developers of HD Wii games have an easy port over to the largest installed base to help recoup investment.

Sony and Ms had different sku's because the ones before were not selling. And they thought new sku's would sell better than the ones before. Not an issue with te wii.

Not quite true. We didn't say we weren't interested in graphics etc. The question was whether we would be willing to give up motion control in order to get those things. Very different questions.

There is nothing in a game I would trade motion control for. No point. I would just give up gaming anyway if I had to go back to traditional controllers.