So many very good and less good ideas, put together so awkwardly and so reticently announced.

Did Ninty turn cunningly evil and made it up, with the complicity of some moneyhatted 3rd parties (this would explain the fake demos, for example), to lure MS and Sony into copying it and horribly fail?

Or is Ninty totally clueless and it hastily put it together as an intermediate step, still having a long way to go developing the real next gen console?

You mean, the very console that the devs have had and praised and commented on?
You think the devs are lying too?

I just hope this thread wasn't inspired by the recenty malstrom comments. Not saying it is but that guy is so god damn one dimensional i hate it. for the record i think he is probably the best analyst around today, but his recent comments were the first thing poppoed in my head upon seeing this "decoy" theory.

Didn't they make fake demos? It's obviously a conspiracy!   

I read some Malstrom comments, and as it happens every now and then, I partially agreed with him (most often I start agreeing on some things and disageeing on others, then I strongly disagree as soon as he goes ballistic and starts raving), but I missed the decoy ones. I can't decide whether looking like a Malstromite should get me amused or worried!   

A decoy is probably the worst thing to do, considering the shareholders reaction yesterday.
I believe it is what it is, shareholders don't understand the significance, and Nintendo is holding back some details, such as how many controllers you can use, etc.

What has been demoed about the WiiU at this point in time could best be described as a 'teaser', and large portions of the strategy are (most likely) not being explained at this point in time ...

One of the things that was mentioned in their presentation that hasn't (really) been discussed much is that Nintendo wants the internet to be very integrated with the WiiU. I think most people assumed that this was Nintendo's way of saying they would have a decent online service and have the kind of social networking integration other consoles have had; but if Nintendo's is putting as much effort into creative use of the internet as they have been on user interfaces it is possible we could see something very interesting at the next E3. If Nintendo was "smart" they could also (probably) enter into partnerships with several internet based companies to be able to integrate with their services, and potentially even lock-up feature exclusivity for several years.

It is highly likely that, while we wouldn't know about them, these other strategies could be known within the publishers and developers that Nintendo has attracted; and some of their excitement could be driven by what they could do with the features surrounding them. Consider a concept I will call "Animal Crossing Cloud" ... Rather than every person having a separate environment for every user, you can share your environment with all of your friends and the world is shaped by the sum of all of your actions within the world ... While it may not be the most exciting or fleshed out idea in the world, it does start to make you think about how a games design could be completely reshaped by a different view of how online should be incorporated within the game.

What you suggest makes sense, but what caused my doubts (and will to joke, let's admit it) are some clumsy things committed by Ninty and early 3rd party partners during the presentation, most notably the fake demos and the support to only one tablet controller. Definitive specs could change, but in that case announcing a thing that is considered by many a shortcoming wasn't very smart, leaving it vague would have been better.

1) They weren't fake demos. To my knowledge, they were just gameplay segments of games that are confirmed to be releasing at some point on the system. Nobody ever said that they were running on the console itself.

2) We don't know how powerful the system is. Nintendo are touting it as being powerful enough to be a "next gen" console, so we should assume it is until proven otherwise.

It'd be fun if it were partially a decoy, that is if what we have seen weren't what's entirely there, to throw everyone off the scent