That phone will also cost like $800 at launch. But I do agree that NX might be fairly powerful, especially if they are serious about the fusion idea.

Unless Nintendo decides to announce more details about NX this year instead of next year, I doubt that NX will be coming next year launching with the upcoming Zelda game.

That's because of the massive mark up Apple charges for their products. The A8x processor in the current iPhone is only like $20 of the manufacturing cost. 

I'm thinking Zelda would release early next year and NX late 2016 or even 2017 as far as we can tell. However it's quite possible that an improved version would release with the new console.

Not even sure about that either... Sure, technology is improving at an alarming rate, but what about Nintendo? The 3DS resolution is only on par with the PSP which means that even though it's possible, the next handheld probably won't be 1080p and very unlikely to have hardware as strong as the Wii U..

I highly doubt it.

They can't really show NX this year unless they want N3DS and Wii U sales (already fragile as is) to go completely down the crapper. 

And that's why they can't show Zelda at this E3 ... they can't very well show an NX-focused game before showing the NX itself. 

My guess is too that Aonuma saw the work other Nintendo teams are already doing on the NX and said "we need to get in on this", and the sales side at Nintendo was probably already pushing for this all along. It will sell more copies this way and give Nintendo a sure fire killer app for the NX launch, which means they can really now focus efforts on making sure the post-launch period is good (which is where both the 3DS and Wii U fell apart). 

There likely was very little resistance to the idea from Nintendo's POV ... it's win-win for them. 

Yeah sure a few fans on message boards will throw a anger fit, but they'll get over it ... come November 2006 no one was complaining about Twilight Princess getting moved really. People get over these things. 

Didn't Captain Obvious thought that someone else made a thread with this topic already?

I hope so

You're probably right. I just don't want to jump to conclusions yet.