A good way for Nintendo to destroy their brand.

if it is not a handheld/home console hybrid then it is not a real 9th gen for nintendo ;)

It would mean Nintendo would have to start developing games for it NOW, and seeing how their studios are spread thin and struggling to get any WiiU game out the door as it is, that doesn't seem like a very smart scenario.

Just like Nintendo's handheld business went belly up after they replaced the GBA with the DS just three years later right?

And how about that XBox 360? Boy oh boy, no one bought that after being burned by MS replacing the original XBox so quickly. 

Nope. People prefer 6 year life cycles where the console is barely supported/marketed at all for the last 2 years, because all that really matters is reaching some arbitrary "year length" cut off date. As we can see the Wii brand didn't suffer at all and it would've been horrible if Nintendo had released an HD capable Wii successor if 2011 or even 2010. 

/sarcasm off. 

People bought Wii for Wii Sports, not motion controls.

Wii Sports, Wii Fit, NSMB, Mario Kart, Just DAnce, etc yeah these games are what propelled Wii.

Quality/preference is subjective as I think my Wii library shits all over anyones X360 or even the PS3 library I had. I also think the games out and this Friday shit all over anything known for PS4/XB1.

Fact is DS and 3DS prove over and over again that games bring buyers in droves. They also have the benefit of being in that price range people will pay for only a few titles in mind... and that is with the onslaught of smartphones / tablets encroaching on the portable market.

Wii U needed what is coming out this year for its launch. Had that happened, it would have sold 2x what it has done. But Nintendo f'ed up and didn't deliver that content. Now the 3rd party support has faded and retailers are more focused on what they feel are safer bets; 3DS and PS4/XB1. 

But Wii U will continue. Nintendo will be heavily profitable in the end with plenty of amazing titles out from them as well as the token 3rd party gem. Already a lot of great indie games for it. Of course EA wil continue to unnecessarily gimp their titles when they return and only Ubi/Activision will have decent support.

Nintendo needs to focus on sub-$300 systems with classic IPs true to their form plus new IPs to bring in new audiences. Just as their portables need to retain Pokemon and other IPs while remaining sub-$200.

DS and 3DS don't prove anything. Nintendo's always had a strong hold over the handheld market, particularily with the kids sector.

They have not been able to consistently translate that success to their home console business, even though arguably their home consoles tend to get their higher quality software (SM 3D World > Land, Mario Galaxy > anything on the DS, Skyward Sword >>> Phantom Hourglass, etc. etc.) in large part because they have to compete directly with Sony/MS for customers. 

It will be too late ps4 and xboxone will had by this time a strong install base and library of game and will be not expensive to make so they can make a price cut when the new Nintendo home console.
It's better to Nintendo to wait the 9th generation and make a console as powerfull as the next Xbox one and Playstation 5 and try to attract both gamers Hardcore and Casual.

You have a point with the GBA. The XBox-example doesn't work. MS was late for the gen and everyone expected they are testing the waters. The XBox didn't sold spectacular but was good enough to establish the Halo-franchise. The GBA is different, you're right. Iwata probably wanted to test the new concept with a handheld and not with a home-console and he relied on the backup, that if the DS is a flop, the GBA is still available. DS was successful, so they killed the GBA off.

The typical console-cycle is driven by consumers. As the consoles are slowly reaching the full customer-base, the sales dry up. Also more and more games start to look alike (gameplay, optics, settings, story), and customers stick to their old games mostly. The new gen breaks this cycle.

I think Nintendo honestly is done with the traditional home console concept if the Wii U doesn't succeed past the GCN/N64 levels.

That will make it 3 out of 4 successive console generations where Nintendo has gotten fairly throughly spanked and competing with constantly more powerful home consoles just drives development costs higher and higher which doesn't work for Nintendo if they're limited to that same 20-30 million size niche userbase.

I think their next game hardware will be a gaming tablet, roughly as powerful as the current Wii U, that can stream to a TV when its nearby a TV set. This will let them reuse Wii U assets/engines as well, which will come in handy if the Wii U doesn't make the profits they were hoping for.

I can see them getting into animation for TV and possibly movies as well to expand their business in the future. It was something Yamauchi proposed anyway and it could become their new "second tier".

They could probably release a tablet with the specs of the Wii-U by 2015, wich is what i expect them to do. This would also mean developers will start to use the Wii-U current tablet controller a lot more. Tablet's like the Asus T100 are already very close in power compared to the Wii-U only lacking in graphical power, and that only costs $350 with a keyboard dock.

Though since i'm not sure that the PowerPC architecture is really usable for a mobile platform, it's also possible that they release a tablet with different hardware but that would mean Wii-U is left out to dry.

In fact they could simply launch it as a redesign of the Wii-U.