Wii graphics are good enough. I guess it should be a little bit better than just "Wii HD"; it should be able to play Mario Kart 4-player at 60 fps in HD. If a console with 3x the power of PS3 can be as small and efficient as Wii AND leave enough profit margin to include 2 controllers and a game in each box for $300, then so be it. Otherwise, I would rather have 2 controllers and a game with my console.

 Wii graphics is NOT good enough for next gen.

If you're a first party, shouldn't every game be designed to be a killer app? That's the entire point of being a first party: to sell hardware.

The two old Pilotwings games sold about a million copies apiece. So they did nothing for SNES and N64.

If you look among games with similarly small amounts of content, based on similarly "simple," "accessable" or "universal" concepts in Nintendo's history, there are only a handful of hits. Among games to sell at least 4 million, you have Duck Hunt and Tetris which were bundles... Tetris also sold over 5 million on NES without the bundle. Dr. Mario sold 10 million between NES and GB in the wake of Tetris. That's astounding. Golf and Excitebike for NES, plus Link's Crossbow Training (at half price) all sold between 4-5 million copies.

1984's Golf for NES is still Nintendo's highest-selling single-sport game ever. The Mario & Sonic games, built around lots of Olympic sports, widely outsold all the single-sport Mario games built around more popular and "accessable" sports like soccer and baseball. In fact Deca Sports, without the Nintendo brand or characters, outsold all those single-sport Mario games. You can't really claim "but such-and-so isn't supposed to be a killer app," since absolutely no one thought Mario & Sonic would be a killer app. SEGA was openly ridiculed for speculating the game could sell 4 million copies. Everyone thought that because it looked like a "lower quality" game than Mario Tennis or Mario Golf, with boring Track and Field type sports, that it would sell less. But customers were more concerned about the ability to jump from one sport to the next and get a long play period out of the game.

Games like Pilotsings Resort are following a pre-Super Mario Bros. model. SMB was a landmark in terms of the amount of raw content in games. Atari 2600 and NES before SMB, with games like the aforementioned Golf and ExciteBike, were driven by arcade-style, arcade-sized games. SMB was arcade-style, but way bigger than a normal arcade game. It was designed for long play periods at home instead of for gobbling quarters. Arcades survived in the wake of Atari, but died in the wake of NES with it's long play games.

Basically Nintendo thinks it can get away with following a pre-SMB model if the game has some kind of gimmick or highlights a new hardware feature.

No. It should be HD. And it should play Mario Kart 4-player at 60 fps. I was totally bummed when Mario Kart Wii's framerate dropped when playing in 3- or 4-player. That was really the only flaw in the game. (And actually, the people I was playing with didn't even notice.)

But I really play for fun, not graphics. Nintendo hasn't been releasing many GAMES good enough for the 3rd or 4th generation lately, let alone games good enough for this gen or next.

here is what i would like to see like he said a wii that can display in HD and keep up the frame rate but i dont mind the pointer thing but go back to the snes style controller with the option of an attachment to the bottom of the sideways controller with joysticks. so that with racing you can stear like a car when need be or do special moves in mario, but i would love to see something to where they go back to 2D gaming with 3D thrown in. ya know what mean? 3D is great for racing and certain other types of games like flying and such. RPG's i think are ok at being 3D but the best ones have been the top down view type. then when going into a battle then go into a 3D type interface. there is a way to get both the consumer and developers on teh same page. ya gotta combine the so called effects. ive said this before FPS should never be on a console. they are slow on turning andthe accuracy without the help of a autoshot is horrible. you dont need an autoshot with a pc.

As for the sideways controller, If you guys hadnt noticed fighting games are starting to make a comeback and are going back to the 2D gameplay but adding in the 3D elements and graphics people loved. now throw in a perfect online and boom you have a gamer and non gamers dream. think about it with motion control still in it you can still make games like just dance, and driving games, and adding in things like this *make a new rayman game to where when you jump you shake the controller and he flies.* then add in the 3D graphics and maybe insert some amazing effects to make it wow even more and its cool. then throw in backwards compatibility which for this next system shoudl be easy enough in fact not much changes except for power and maybe an HDMI port and graphics card bump but we dont really need 2 USB ports now do we? one should be enough. and the connector for the tv be an HDMI port and for those without an HDTV they can pack in a cord that can go from HDMI to RCA. 

the old games are still as popular as ever and the style of gameplay are still around and that was proven with the success of SMBWII and DKCR. even look at games like little big planet for the playstation. the consoles need to be more user friendly and cost effective and cost efficient not see how much power we can put into a console to try and outsell the other. kinect was a good idea but I still think its usefullness would be really huge if adapted to the pc in software. think about it, turn pages with just moving your hand, move things around and select with just pointing at the screen, ya know stuff like that and kinect would be perfect for the "everyday" type apps on the pc then gaming on a console. 

That doesn't meant Nintendo shouldn't advance graphics-wise. You really think people will go out and buy an HD Wii when they didn't care enough about HD to ignore Wii and get a PS3/360?

Not to mention Nintendo has the casuals locked down and needs to grow by attracting Core gamers.

That's a TERRIBLE idea. TERRIBLE!!!

And guess what? More power gives devs more options to put fun things in games. Power isn't just about graphics.

Erik man, you actually bothered to type all that? Well, whatever they do, I just hope they have a suprise waiting for me like they did the last 3 times. The wii, DS & 3DS all introduced things that I didn't predict would be used in games. If they can do that, then it'll be bigger than what you outlined. And oh, the wii series was great, but I hope next gen we see 3 new hardcore first party ips! I think last gen had only pikmin and this gen had only the last story.

I would rather see the sweat drops drip from Link's face when he's grappling through smoke filled lava dungeons while the fire in his eyes is reflected in his trusty blade. Mmmm, I can almost smell it.

No, but seriously, I would be very disappointed in a weak Wii2 console. They have always competed in terms of raw processing power- the only exception was the Wii, and there was very good reason for that.

Okay, that's a good distinction. It's not about sheer sales, it's about passionate customers. Passionate customers are the ones that pay for the hardware, and a game which sells less may sell more hardware than one that sells more.

But I would still say that Nintendo has at least 5 existing 2nd and 3rd tier franchises that have a possibility to be a killer app if they simply got back to their roots and beefed up the content. 3D Mario, Zelda, Kirby, Star Fox and Donkey Kong Country. DKCR at least got kinda close, but I think the developers got in their own way in that case, talking themselves out of the Kremlings and other classic characters and generally overdesigning the game. But the way DKCR got back to classic 2D platforming and upped the number of levels from 40-50 in the old games, to 70-80 in DKCR, is generally the right model. NSMBW got the gameplay practically perfect, but didn't beef up the content. That's why I call for a SMB with 120 levels.

And then there are quite a few series which don't have killer app potential, but do have passionate customers. Of those, most of them, like F-Zero, Metroid, Paper Mario, Pikmin, and Wario Land are either off-track or being neglected. Only the more recent creations like WarioWare and Rhythm Heaven seem safe from Nintendo.

Pilotwings... well... I'm not going to keep going on about 1 little game.

SNES was just a graphics upgrade. PS2 was just a graphics upgrade. So was Game Boy Color, and Advance, and now 3DS. And N64 was supposedly a revolutionary console, but it plummeted in sales from SNES. You can name the great games for N64 on your fingers.

There is no such thing as "casuals." C'mon, man. The expanded audience that Nintendo pursued with Wii now become part of the "core" audience when Nintendo launches the next console. Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Mario Bros. and Mario Kart represent the "core" of Nintendo's console business.

Clearly, when Wii Party, Just Dance and Kinect are best-sellers, the people you and others call "casuals" are actually part of the core audience for gaming. Just Dance 2, Zumba Fitness and the Michael Jackson game were in the top 10 games in NPD last month. This is not 2004 anymore.

And nobody is "locked down." Wii Fit had an expansion pak and Nintendo has not moved to make any secondary fitness titles. Wii Sports had an excellent sequel, but it seemed more focused on showing off Motion than having the most fun games. And Miyamoto keeps trying to make 3D Mario into 2D Mario, resulting in less 2D Mario games and worse 3D Mario games. So if anything, Nintendo is taking their core audience for granted and are likely to enter slow decline, if they haven't already.