My two thoughts on this are that I can’t see Nintendo releasing a console less than 5 years after they launched their previous console, and I can’t see Nintendo releasing a handheld system and a console within a year of each-other; which means the earliest I would expect a console from Nintendo would be November 2011. With that said, it is entirely possible that Midway is working on games for this system even if it isn’t going to be released until 2011 or 2012 ...
If you were to produce a system that was more powerful than the HD consoles odds are pretty good that you would want to give developers and publishers a couple years notice to develop your launch games because of how much time it takes to develop these games; and if the system is a significant enough improvement many companies may have to upgrade their technology to take advantage of the system which can not be done over night. Hypothetically speaking, Nintendo could choose high-end hardware today for their system assuming that in three years (when they release the console) this will be cheap hardware and encourage developers to build games for this; and certain details (especially relating to the user-interface) might be kept under-wraps until the system was closer to release because they might be able to take advantage of these features in mid-development.
While I would doubt that many developers would put 3 years into developing a launch game with a full team, I wouldn’t be that surprised to see developers today spending a year upgrading their technology while focusing on simple game-demos in order to begin full development 2 years before the system is released.
