Not surprised at all. Nintendo is confident and has every right to be. Sony and Microsoft are just going to copy most of the features Wii U has anyway so from Nintendo's perspective they move on their own time not the competition. Let me put it this way: If im the best at innovating why should i care about who is trailing behind me? Im leading the way......they have to worry about getting in my position.

wii U should have launched last year and ps360 replacements should have launched this year.

NES was discontinued 20 years in japan and 10 in NA

Snes was discontinued 13 years after launch in japan, 8 years in NA. I cant see them doing that with the wii.

and we all know ps, ps2, ps3, x360 wont be 5-6 years

Not strange at all.

I remember perfectly that Iwata blamed the Gamecube failure because it arrived too late on the market compared to the Playstation 2. That was according to him the main point.

Nintendo is in a much stronger position now. The Wii has been rentabilized to an extraordinary point. The 3DS has crushed the Vita. Nintendo is in position to force the market. They are the global leaders? Sony and Microsoft have lost a lot of money on their console since day one. They are now making profits on the xbox and the PS3 and want to make it last the most to recoup their losses.

Nintendo does not need to do it. They are the one leading the market, and the other two will be forced to follow before they expected.

consoles should be on the market as long as it is profitable but it is not the same thing as releasing a console every 5-6 years 

we are talking about two different things here

And at this point I am not even sure that Sony will be able to launch a new console next year.

The Wii U has a big window to exploit. With the hype it has it can eaisly sold out during the holidays. And with one more year of being in advance, it could get a 10 million lead before the earliest competition is released.

If Sony release his console mid 2014, being more than 15 millions behind, it is game over for them. They hardly could recover a 5 million deficit to the Xbox360.

The early success of the Wii U could send the competition in trouble.

I think it is a bad move for Nintendo to release so early. They will get mostly ps360 ports from third parties with slightly better graphics. Nintendo games sell the console for the loyal customers but after first christmas, general population does not care about WiiU. They know something about the upcoming consoles and will wait for them.

Nintendo is definitely making the right choice, having a 1 year head start could really benefit them in both sales and a lot of third party support, at least until the next xbox and ps4 launches, that's when we'll see if the Wii U will share the same fate as the Wii in terms of third party support.

Seems like a pretty good idea to me.

more games is usually = to more sales in consoles....
and nintendo learned their lessons... i think