Hmm, I don't think that will happen personally. I think in the end, it's going to be on the NX. It's too late to put it on the Wii U. AC can be played for years, and it won't be able to do that on a console with the noose quickly tightening around its neck o:

Hehe, good one. My prediction is that Nintendo will announce no more AAA Wii U games and they are moving onto support the NX.

AC Amiibo Festival shows there is a build or engine for an HD Animal Crossing game, but it makes me wonder if it was originally delayed due to Nintendo being Nintendo, or for another reason.

To be honest I think it was delayed to launch on NX myself.

I don't see it happening at this rate. :/

Me too!

Pros:

• When Animal Crossing Plaza was discontinued one year ago there was promises of "news".
• There will be a continuation of May online game releases: MK8  - Splatoon - (Animal Crossing).
• All assets needed exist in Amiboo Festival.
• Everythng Animal Crossing is selling very well in Japan.
• There are AC stages in MK8, SSB and Nintendoland. (and maybe a Splatoon stage will come).
• There are 100 different AC amiibo cards, with more to come! Only for Happy Home Designer?
• There are more and more Animal Crossing amiibos released.

Cons:

• Nintendo being Nintendo.

Nintendo rarely announces titles more than a year in advance, so obviously they're not going to talk about 2017 titles now. Not when those titles are likely to be filler titles, rather than major offerings.

Here is Nintendo's roster so far for 2016 on Wii U: Twilight Princess HD, Star Fox Zero, GIR X Fire Emblem, Pokken, and Zelda U, plus whatever has become of Project Guard (unless it actually releases in the next month or so) and Project Giant Robot, plus the next Mario & Sonic olympics title. And that's just what we know now - Nintendo always has new unannounced titles to show at E3, like Animal Crossing Amiibo Festival, Mario Tennis, and Star Fox Zero (which was set to release in 2015 at the time).

Nintendo only needs to tread water in 2017. Hype for NX will be the primary focus. I wouldn't be surprised if, assuming NX is both a handheld and a console, the handheld gets released early in the year, and then the console near the end of it.

As I said, Nintendo will be focusing on getting back third parties. Launching with the next console too quickly is a bad idea - they need to have third parties on it from the start, and they need to make sure that there's motivation to stay on it. That means they need to give the third parties enough time to get their first titles up to scratch in time. If they're still "deciding" whether they want to support NX, then they won't have enough time to get a decent game ready. Nintendo supposedly started distributing dev kits in October - that would give third parties about 11 months to get games ready for launch (allowing 2 months for printing, etc).

For comparison, Wii U dev kits first started appearing in the wild before E3 2011. And Nintendo had already lined up a heap of publishers.

I can't say with absolute certainty that NX will launch in 2017. But in my view it's highly likely.

Also note the comparative lineups for final years of consoles. Wii's biggest title was Mario Party 9 (and unless you count PokePark, nothing else really significant). Not counting Twilight Princess, Gamecube had Chibi-Robo. Indeed, Gamecube's entire final year consisted of four titles - Baten Kaitos Origins, Chibi Robo, Odama, and Twilight Princess. Wii had a few more, but mostly due to delays of regional releases - The Last Story, for instance, was a 2011 game in Japan.

The Wii U has two different major franchises getting main entries, plus spinoffs of two other big franchises. Add Pikmin 4, which has been practically confirmed but unannounced (Miyamoto specifically said it's nearly finished), and you've got a fairly strong lineup. And if Animal Crossing shows up, too, then you're talking about a lineup much more like Wii's 2011 lineup, which had Skyward Sword, Xenoblade Chronicles (admittedly a 2010 game in Japan), Kirby's Return to Dreamland, and a Mario spinoff (Mario Sports Mix).

I'm expecting the Wii U's final year to look a lot more like Gamecube's final year - just treading water with a few final titles, only one of which could be called "notable".

Obvious prediction: No, it won't.

What exactly is the difference between "considering making games" and "waiting until launch to decide?"? Seems like the same thing to me and sure NX likely will encounter some skepticism (deservedly so) from some third parties after the Wii U debacle. 

Beyond that Nintendo could simply have instructed third parties to answer vaguely about NX, I don't think they want developers making concrete statements about a platform such as "yes we're making games" that hasn't even been formally unveiled. 

I think the "real" Animal Crossing was in development for Wii U at some point ... but Nintendo moved it to NX (portable + console) and that's absolutely 100% the right business move. AC is like Nintendo's 2nd or 3rd largest franchise (portable) in Japan, they can't afford to just "waste" one on Wii U to make a very small part of their fanbase happy when it would sell far, far more on the NX. 

It's just not good business, that's really all I think it comes down to. Just pure business logic, nothing personal. Nintendo is a business not a charity or a non-profit organization for their fans. Amiibo Festival is the Animal Crossing that Wii U fans are going to get, they're just going to have to accept that. 

If they "waste" an Animal Crossing on Wii U for 2016, that means the next one probably won't be ready until 2019 or so ... and NX needs its heavy hitters much earlier in the console cycle than that. If NX fails, that's basically it for Nintendo as a hardware maker IMO, that means they need more of their big gun IPs early on. Abandoning the Wii U Animal Crossing is absolutely the right move. 

In hindsight Zelda: Majora's Mask, Perfect Dark, and Conker should have been moved to the GameCube launch window too ... maybe Nintendo could've beat at least Microsoft that gen and discouraged them from staying in the business, but they let themselves get beat by MS and that gave the XBox division confidence as in "hey if we can beat Nintendo" and that's eventually snowballed to the situation today where Nintendo is basically locked out of the entire core gaming market. Never should have let MS gain that much traction. 

I don't really see this happening unfortunately..

No way in hell NX is coming in 2017.
Wii U will struggle to last even one more year, much less two. The fact that almost everything still coming to it is either a late/delayed port or localization or low budget filler shows that Nintendo is cutting their losses and moving on.

Many games that would have come to Wii U, like Retro's next project and Pikmin 4, will have been moved wholesale to NX.