The 360 is almost 6 years old-- it isn't some kind of god. 

Nintendo should be able to easily surpass the 360/PS3-- especially because it most likely won't even realease until mid-late 2012. 

Cause of two factors, economies of scale, and form factor, products like video game systems reduce in price as you make more, so early on its more expensive to make them, which is why prices drop.

form factor is another, Nitnendo will want to make its next system small, like the Wii, itsmore expeinsve to make a smaller system.

They might, but even Wii was not much more powerful than an original Xbox at best, some even argue its weaker overall, so they may want to make it more, but may end up deciding the costs are too high

This is exactly what I was thinking when reading every post up until yours. I think people are overestimating the power of the current gen HD twins. They are already outperformed and should be by the next Ninty console. If they aren't however, that would mean that Ninty is lazy when it comes to technology ever since Wii. Before that, people would never say that a Ninty console is always gonna be less powerful. Nintendo should adopt this "ten year plan" next gen. I wanna see if they can actually keep up.

Also its unlikely their next system will be bigger than Wii, if you notice they downscale rather than upscale the size of their home consoles, and Slim is still larger than Wii, so it won't be cheap to shove PS3 power into a Wii, or even smaller than Wii system.

As for Third parties coming to the system, if you believe that will happen, I have a bridge to sell you

Who ever said that they wanted it to be ultra small like the Wii/ Ps2 slim?

Notice something?

From a technical standpoint I see little from the rumours which is difficult to believe; after all, a system that has 10 times the processing power of the PS3 and XBox 360 should be possible to produce, so as long as no one is making unrealistic claims (32 times the processing power) it isn't unrealistic.

With that said, I think many of the supposed system ideas seem to lack any type of creative thought or vision that Nintendo systems tend to have.

Yes, the Gamecube was a very small, inexpensive system, that had substantial processing power ...

Yes the GCN was powerful, but when it came down to the Wii, they were not able to stay in the graphics arms race while still offering an affordable system, so there is a good chance they will end up not delivering a high power system this time

This's the beauty of the Pre-E3 time. Enjoy it, maybe it's far more nehoyable than the event itself.