doubt a new console would be announced and I don't see why a new handheld would announced either...seems like either of those wouldn't be announced for at least another year or year and half at the minimum

I'm expecting this to be bogus for all the reasons other people have outlined, but I would like to add this; even though the DS is selling so strong that many of us cant imagine them replacing it, no one could imagine them replacing the GBA when they did either.

If anything really does come up it's most likely a DS successor IMO. No way would they start trying to move the Wii aside already, especially with it's momentum lately.

The three pillars: The Wii, the DS, and the GBA.

Well, since the GBA is totally dead, there's time for a new third pillar.

1. Dominate the portable world with the DS.
2. Dominate the mainstream with the Wii.
3. Dominate the hardcore with the Super Duper Nes-cube 64.

As long as they still support the Wii and the DS, a new platform will be welcomed with open arms.

Not DS2 because it's still very strong and able to do monster sales on every favourable week, be it a big game release, Xmas, any other big sales week, DS fully exploits it.
Not Wii2 for the same reason.
Vitality? Maybe, but' it's more niche than any other Wii device, presenting it as a new platform could risk making its sales results look disappointing.
WiiHD doesn't make sense, unless they simply make a Wii capable of HD output without relying on upscaling, simply an update with 100% bidirectional compatibility with Wii, it would imply a slightly more powerful GPU, simply pumping out more pixels and doing a better antialiasing to make things look smooth even on big HD screens, but keeping the same polygon count as Wii, not changing at all the models of what appears on screen and by no means introducing new games HD-only, incompatible with old Wii, splitting the architecture in two would be a suicide.

Being that Nintendo hardly ever participates at GDC, and they have never announced anything major at GDC that I can think of, this is not even a believable rumour ...

I wonder if a new platform means not a gaming machine.

I would love to see Nintendo developing an "iPad".

But yes, I know, they're a gaming company.

Pachter, is that you?

Some employee at some publisher? Not a chance. This is just another hoax, even less reliable than Pachter's usual garbage. Nothing but another troll trying to tank Wii sales.

While I agree that this is a unbelievable rumour, rumours like this can be started by low level employees at large publishers who don't understand what they're seeing ...

In theory, Nintendo could approach a couple of major publishers to get feedback on the current state of their next generation hardware; and, while this is a different approach to what Nintendo usually does, this isn't that unusual being that Microsoft and Sony have done this in the past. There goal from a effort like this (beyond improving third party relations) would be to get feedback on the hardware, finalize the specifications, and to begin releasing early dev-kits for the middle of 2010; with the intention of releasing a system Q4 2011.

Now, the technical staff (and many of the support staff) will know that it will take 18 to 24 months to make a decent launch game for a next generation system, and if they began today the game would not be ready until late 2011; but the low level data-entry clerk hears about Nintendo showing off next generation hardware and writes an email to their favourite blog and expects a system to be released in the next 6 months.