Hopefully the Fall conference is at mid september. 2 months away...

( ._.)

I think it depends on many factors to see if the next gen consoles will actually bleed money. I do not think vita is selling at a big loss (might even break even soon) at the moment. The issue is making up for the R&D and such. I think sony won't do the ps3 route this gen but take a route similar to vita in hardware. Dev friendly and made up of off the shelf parts for the most part and will exclude the cell. The thing with home consoles is that just like currernt gen, big publishers will push for bigger better looking games. I personally see the wiiU tablet as a mistake. I think they should have used the cost of that into making the hardware more powerful. Then they would have had a strong enough hardware to avoid a potential situation where devs leave them behind in favor of the other two + will result in a system with Nintendo 1st party and all the good 3rd party games plus motion controls. That's the problem I see with differentiation stratergy, it's high risk high reward.

oh do you know a date or something for the event?

They do the conference before TGS. And this year TGS start at September 20th. AFAIK it was mentioned september as the month.

Also, while I don't expect anything from the shareholders meeting in july, in august is possible another Nintendo Direct as these are made bimonthly.

so they dont care about future multiplatforms? 0_o it's fine by me, if i ever get it it will be as a second system, but not everyone who gets a wiiU will buy another next gen system...

but i guess those people only want nintendo's first party games...?

I completely agree, and the screen controller impedes on any more budget that could be injected into HW performance (R&D costs for dual-screen tech, cost of screen amortized in console sale affects price, dual-screen requires dual rendering so affects performance). At the same time, the strategy you're proposing was used twice by Nintendo to no avail. Once with the N64, another time with the Cube. This far the handheld, DS, Wii lines of business have been working well for them, it's only sound to expect more high reward for more risk, it paid off most of the time in the past (bar a poorly executed case, the virtual boy). With that said, if the WiiU does fail, then Nintendo will have to re-evaluate and you would be right. But at the point in history where we are, this really is the best solution for Nintendo as their history would ask of them.

On the flipside, Sony's new strategy with Vita holds alot of promise, and I do agree with you that the PS4 should follow a similar, much more balanced approach as compared to the PS3. If the Vita is the blueprint for the PS4 that's the best way to go for Sony. But for Nintendo, it's a whole other history with very different strategy.

A jet engine would be kind of sweet. BWOOOOOOOOOOOCHHHHHHHHHHHHHH now we are talking power...

I think the difference this time around is that they are going into the next gen as the market leader...with a nice chunk of the casual market with them. That's why I think the approach I mentioned would have been better.

But like you said...so many unknowns still. Only time will tell on how these companies will react and act in next gen. Either way I think it will be an even closer fight between the three next gen :D which is great for consumers because it results in the best outcomes for us that way!

Gotcha..thanks for the info. Do they usually give out new info during shareholders meetings?

Sadly, no. At least not always. And given that E3 and a Nintendo Direct has happened recently, we should wait to see if at august there's a ND or wait until September conference.