When will Wii U owners be satisfied enough to accept a new console?

[Cheebee]

Soundwave said:

Once Nintendo announces a handheld successor, it's pretty much over for Wii U development IMO. 

They will have to shift most of their resources to support the handheld, which will likely have Wii U level graphics itself. 

The only upside to that is they might be able to port some of the handheld and Wii U titles back and forth. 

But it will probably be a lot like what happened to the GameCube after the DS launched -- Nintendo's internal support for the GameCube fell off a cliff.

IMO the 3DS successor IS both the successor to the 3DS/Wii U also ... it's one and the same thing. Unified.  

There are a few very interesting articles out there about interviews with Iwata, in which he actually very clearly says there will be separate handheld and home systems after 3DS/Wii U.

Also, that they will share a very similar architecture/OS, and porting of games and assets will be very easy and streamlined between the two. He's cited Nintendo need to move toward a business like Apple/Android, where there's a single OS and apps/games can work on a 'family of systems'. He even went on to say there might me multiple (as in more than 2) systems, but that that would remain to be seen (like how smartphones and tablets get new versions every year, but old apps/games still work). He mentioned such a strategy will be needed to be abe to produce enough games from launch, and shorten development cycles, thus avoiding droughts.

I linked to said articles a few times in the past on these forums - I'm too lazy to go look them up now, but they should be very easy to find on Google.