I say that we let Nintendo be Nintendo.

After 120 years on the marklet plus a knack for kicking market and sales analysts in the junk with more force than the crew on Mythbusters with an ulimited supply of C4...........Nintendo will do as Nintendo wants to do.   And that is all there is to it.

And Nintendo will do so with dignity and lots of success! Proving Pachter and everyone else wrong. Heck even GameCube was a success, if they can succeed being out sold like 3 to 1 then I have no doubt which ever direction they go they will be vastly successful.

The Wii HD ship has sailed and sunk already.  They could have had a game changer if it got shipped for holiday '09 and they could have kept themselves super competitive if they released in the first half of this year.  They passed it by, and I can only assume they did so with some higher purpose in mind.  To announce a system that is ONLY HD at this point (above and beyond what they already have) is a waste.  The next system will have to be an innovation, because the HD market is already becoming saturated.  If  Nintendo wants to compete in graphical tech, they need to go the next step beyond, if they want to compete outside of that they need to (once again) say "screw the visuals."  At this point, it's clear that they are going for the latter over the former.  Nintendo probably doesn't want to beat the competition to the gate, and may even suffer a severe beating through 2012-13, but when they do launch it'll be with a technology that reminds people why Nintendo products can't be ignored.

Frankly, I wish they would have had a Wii HD last year for the holidays - it was warrented - but if they left that huge pile of money on the table then they aren't going to reach for it now that it has shrunken so noticably.

I think a more interesting way to look at this issue is by asking the question:

"why does nintendo run their console and their handheld businesses so differently?"

The thought that a mid-life released HD version of Wii would suddenly make gamers and developers that previously didn't love Wii, love it, is quite funny. Next gen having minimum specs closer to the generation's average will help porting 3rd party multiplats, just like being very essential maybe pissed 3rd parties off this gen, but helped Wii overkilling competition for 3 years, profiting since launch and becoming strong enough to keep the leadership as total sales for at least another two years even if competitors started doing wonders and Wii sucking. Each generation has specific needs and it's never the same as the previous. Nintendo will do the right thing, and Wii2 will surely be powerful enough to leave 3rd parties no excuses, but it won't be just an uninspired HD version of Wii.

No Wii HD.  We'll get an HD capable Wii 2 in late 2011/early 2012, but that's not the same thing...

Why would we want 3 consoles that do exactly the same thing, upgrade pixel counts, polygon counts, and frame rates, but not actually change the stale old gameplay?

Nintendo is the market leader because they actually change the gameplay, and because they actually carved out a new unique market for themselves.  They should be applauded for that, and not expected to take a step backwards into the graphical arms race.  Kinect and Move are playing catch-up with the Wii.  The Wii doesn't need to play catchup with the pixel count.

A Wii HD isn't enough.  The PS3 is already a Wii HD.

No matter how crazy different it is, Pachter's going to go "See, I told you so.  They should have done this years ago."

If that Wii brings something else apart of just being a mere HD upgrade I'm in.

A few notes.

First of all, on what basis MVP4eVa appears to be  putting words in N'G_C's mouth. That being said, I concur that Nintendo needs to "modernize" its on-line experience.

That being said, if this were early 2009, a mid-console update to HD might make sense. But it is almost 2011. At this time, flat screen TV makers are complaining about how their products are not selling like they once did (http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2010-11-02-tv-price-cuts_N.htm). And stories abound about how people are not spending like they once did (http://www.kamcity.com/namnews/asp/newsarticle.asp?newsid=56822). [Wwhy do you think that NPD stopped releasing information -- it made the industry look bad.]

Nintendo will have something different for a console for Holiday 2012.

Mike from Morgantown