Bah!
Most of this is just stupid. The misconception that the Wii needs HD graphics to compete has been around for a long time and has spawned the idea of Wii HD. It is an idea that is not entirely plausible and has very little to do with logic. What would be the point of a console like Wii HD, or Wii 1.5?
Wii 1.5HD would have two distinct and separete paths to choose from. The first would be an entirely new machine, and the second would be a fully backwards compatible machine that is slightly upgraded to output HD. Question is, why would Nintendo release an entirely new machine when the Wii is still doing so well? They would have nothing to gain by releasing a true successor so quickly.
If it's backwards compatible 100%, how would it handle upscaling old games, and what would it do not to alienate those that already own a Wii? Would new Wii-games be like old Gameboy Color games, two in one? Wouldn't it be fair to say that such a move would make it more difficult to make games for the console, or give developers a smaller installbase to develop for? Is HD so important that it requires this form of attention, and discomfort from all involved? I think that most current Wii owners do not think it is.
The feeling I get from these articles is that the knee-jerk reaction 'Cannot... Succeed... Without... Better... Graphics...' kicks in whenever journalists think about the future of the Wii. But it can succeed, and it has succeeded already. For two years Wii have been the ultimate proof that graphics is not the holy grail. I'm just waiting for the moment when the gaming community realizes this.
So what I DO see in the future of the Wii is not the 2010 Wii HD1.5, but simply a new Wii SKU with more storage space, possibly Wii Motion+/Wii Speak bundled, etc. I'm also debating whether to call the Xbox Elite the 'Xbox 520', or to call the arcade version the 'Xbox 180', since that seems to be precisely the type of upgrade these articles call Wii 1.5.
No, the next Nintendo Console will come out much later than 2010, and it will not be a Wii HD1.5. Because Wii HD1.5 simply makes no sense. And for the next time, you can be pretty sure that Nintendo will do it's very best to keep on pressing the revolution. I cannot say they will succeed (they can fail horribly at times), but they would have very little to gain by just doing incremental upgrades.
I'm going to have to hedge myself by saying that it's entirely possible that Nintendo does something completely out of the box, and if they do, then all bets are off.
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