Next Nintendo console will be out in 3 and a half years time, in November 2011. Nintendo brings out a new console every 5 years, for past 25 years, only exception is NES arrived 8 years before the SNES in 1983. 

NES = 1983, SNES = 1991, N64 = 1996, GameCube  = 2001, Wii = 2006

The thing with new IPODS is that they are practically the same thing but with more flash memory, better hard drive and a redesign.

With the Wii, they would have to be able to create a new console that supports HD but still make game that are compatible with the old that doesn't support HD... It seems kinda hard to me.

If Nintendo wants to succeed, they need not to fall back on their old habits of supporting their winning consoles until the competition is killing them. They made the mistake with NES which was being killed by the Genesis and then the PS destroyed the SNES. If they do that, they are back to N64 era.

Your perception is slightly off, Godot. Nintendo did not lose their edge in the "console war" due to holding off on releasing a successor to the NES. They lost their edge because the SNES did not do what the NES did: it did not expand the market, but instead competed for the market that the NES had created and the Genesis had invaded. The mistake was not waiting for the competition, for they did that with the Wii too. The mistake was not disrupting the market with each new console they released.

Straight from the horse's mouth:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVvDChGv82w&feature=related

"The moment when it can became finally clear that videogames would take their place along side tv, movies, and music as staple of leisure entertainment."

Mass producing Wiis just as like TVs FTW! YEP, they want the radio/tv public to be video game public too. They want video game consoles as common as karaoke/videoke tv/radios. And the 10 year lifecycle plan can do that.

Rol and SkyRender are talking sense.

@Almost everyone else: GAAAAAAH!!!

First of all, I laughed when I saw Yushire's comment that Malstrom "plays it safe." The man published an article called "Why Wii Won" during launch week in November 2006, before any sales data had come out.

And to the general misunderstandment:

Wii is right now destroying all the conventional wisdom about the VG market. Eventually, it will establish a new conventional wisdom.

This new conventional wisdom will also be wrong! Nonetheless, the whole market will fall in behind it. They'll be a bunch of fitness games, for example, but they will either be many times more expensive to develop than Wii Fit, or they will not sell as well due to competition, or both. Obviously, this is a superficial imitation of Wii, as it only mimics the particular values like practical use, social play and special controllers, but ends up recreating the "red ocean" of old.

Eventually, all the competition will lead to new Wii-alike consoles being launched. Just like 360 and PS3 are struggling against PS2, just like PS1 outperformed Gamecube for a few years, just like NES outsold Genesis until after SNES had launched, the new batch of Wii-alikes won't make much headway against Wii. (Neither will Xmote, btw.)

In the meantime, Nintendo will make a console aimed to surplant and render irrelevant all the values of Wii! It will compete with non-consumption, not with the other 8th gen systems that come out. And so Wii will last longer than any console in history because it will remain the standard-bearer for the "old" values basically forever. It will only die when Nintendo's new system succeeds in surplanting those values.

And it will do so first with a bunch of revolutionary new games, and then with "bridge" games, which will be new iterations of Mario, Mario Kart, Zelda, Brain Training, Nintendogs, Wii Sports, Wii Fit, etc., which will contain the new values of the new system to slowly bring the old players over. Just like some old gamers are starting to be converted to Wii's and DS's values with games like Phantom Hourglass and Mario Kart Wii.

The pertinent question is not WHEN this will happen, but WHY this will happen. There are only 2 reasons, and someone already explained them above...

Edit: it was Rol:

1) A competitor is about to launch a new system which offers a way to play games that gets people excited. In that case Nintendo has to be ready. Note that the competitor's system has to be more than a Wii 2.0 to be a threat to Nintendo.

2) If pretty much everything that can be done on the Wii has been done and things are going to become stale, Nintendo has to introduce a new system to renew interest in videogames. Note that the new Nintendo system has to be more than a Wii 2.0 to succeed.

Right.  What I wanted to say is that when Nintendo will release its next console, it won't be a problem at all to get enough processing power AND BC, as Wii uses PowerPC architecture that is already offering (in the tri-core used by XBox 360, but Cell CPUs can have one or more PowerPC cores too) enough power for HD consoles' needs, so it will offer it even more cheaper as time goes by.

^^^

So... households have a HDTVs, HD players and HD signal by that time then? Though is it better to just remove the HD out of the picture? HD will do nothing in gaming anyway,it will only have more better resolution but thats just it.

They are clever and they are learning from previous experience, both their own and that of competitors: releasing first didn't help themselves when Sony became the king of the hill, neither it helped XBox360, with Wii surpassing it in a few months even startin one year later and PS3 slowly catching up too; shortening the life span didn't help XBox 1, it helped killing it instead. Generally, pursuing the competitors doesn't work alone, if you find yourself second you must do it , but you must also find something more creative than just chasing if you want to get the leadership, and Nintendo with Wii did it in a such newer way that it surpassed competitors with no efforts, like if its novelty made it jump through other dimensions, a little time passed and POOF!, MS horrified saw it wasn't first anymore.

Now the others are chasing it and Nintendo doesn't need to look at lifecycle anymore, or at least not to follow others' policies about it, it only needs to remain creative and not letting the competitors force its release dates will make them panic and itself stronger even more. 

One thing I think you guy are wrong about is the wii main buying point its controller can be improved. I all need to do is license the guncon sensor technology so that the wii controller can fully recognize full 4-d space it controller is lacking in ability in good depth recognition.Also I believe the accelermeter should be taking out and replace with something more accurate or what is in the remote. That way you can make the ultimate immersive game.

Sorry, I don't understand where are you driving at... What I'm saying is only that if and when Nintendo will feel the need to go HD (*), it will be able to do it a lot cheaper than its competitors did this gen, and easily keeping BC too. I'm not able to make predictions about when this will happen, though, as I'm persuaded Nintendo is willing to keep its schedule as unrelated from competitors' ones as possible, only minding the customers desires, so that it will also be easier to let Sony and MS in the uncomfortable shoes of the pursuers.

(*) And I think it will be really necessary only when very big screen HDTVs will be dirt cheap, so not in a near future.

I agree that Nintendo showed undeniably that resolution is the smaller of most gamers' concerns, as long as graphics aren't blocky anymore, and this have been true for a lot of years by now.