That would be death to the Wii...everyone who owns a SD Wii would be essentially screwed. Why would Nintendo do that to its customers, especially since the Wii's doing much better than HD consoles anyway.

Seriously, this HD Wii prediction gets old...it's not gonna happen unless it's an official "Wii 2" much later down the line. All we need are more games...if you're holding out for a special Wii model with HD, you're going to be waiting a long time.

Also, where the hell do you come up with the idea that in 2009, suddenly nobody will want a Wii unless it has HD? If more innovative, fun games keep coming out, there's no reason the masses won't keep buying Wiis.

For such a sizeable improvement, it would be a programmer's nightmare to have to produce games that work on both the old Wii and an HD Wii. Just what exactly do you mean when you say HD? The ability to output in 720p? Or do you mean basically the capabilities of the PS3 or 360, because if you mean WiiHD games would look like a PS3/360 game, there's no way they could have the game play on both the new and old Wii. That would kill Nintendo.

EDIT:  And as for the DS, no.  There were no changes to any internal hardware, relatively.  The microphone was moved to a better position, as was the power button.  The stylus was made smaller.  The screens are brighter.  The GBA games now stick out slightly, due to the overall smaller size of the DS Lite.

I think that's it.  All DS videogames are the same on the old DS and the new DS Lite...exactly the same.

You're talking about changing the Wii's hardware to make it more powerful, thus allowing for more complex and graphically intense games...there's no way the old Wii would be able to play the games...if it could, there would be no point in buying a WiiHD. 

1) It can't kill the current model unless the new games don't play on it. there's no reason for that to happen. The only thing people with the old model don't get is HD.

2) Look at DS sales from when the Lite came out and you'll see that many people are willing to upgrade their Nintendo systems within two years. There's only a small improvement from DS to Lite (trust me, I have both) yet Nintendo fans will still pick the new model up.

3) HD consoles are failing now for their price, not their options. Once they get into the casual buyer's range they will pick up. And in two years HD will be everywhere. You pretty much won't be able to buy a TV without it by then. HD gaming will suddenly matter.

Now, I have to question you on a few things:
What makes you think the Wii is any different from the DS and the GBA, both of which got upgraded versions?  Seems like a winning strategy so far, since it's made them massive amounts of money and is even the reason they were able to win the war against the PSP.

What makes you think anyone has said Wii demand will decrease because of HD? System sales always slow down as you leave your third holiday which is why Nintendo has been releasing updated hardware for each system to maintain momentum through the third year into the fourth.

Why would the Wii be anywhere near the PS3 or X360 in terms of power?  That'd be a complete change to the system.  To add something like 720p would take very little yet the difference in output would be enough to see new Wiis to people that already bought the current one.  Just like the DSL or GBA

>>What do you think nintendo should do?

Stay on course.

I think all this supposed market resistance is either analysts who can see past their old extrapolation curves, or fanboys who are systems are "losing" and have no other arguments to present to explain the present.

You're looking at things on too large of a scale. Just adding HD will not require a massive change to the hardware at all. Some additional power may be needed, but it wouldn't be much. And they'd obviously just do it the same way they did the DSL - eliminate the old model by taking over the same price point.

Besides, you're still ignoring the fact that in two years the HDTV market will have tripled or some such according to the analysts. A minor boost to the visuals, really little more than adding 4 backlight levels instead of 1, is just enough to make the thing sell like mad again.

You can get black and many other DS lites now.

There is rumor a black wii might be out this Christmas. Besides for color choices, not much else needs to be done in the short term besides increasing production.

I could see a wii elite, but not for a couple of years from now, after demand for the current model slows down and they can lower the price of the base model. The elite would be basically the same spec wise, but include an internal hard drive and wired ethernet would be standard.

Right now, the wii has the problem for online games that bluetooth conflicts with 802.11g... You really should be wired for real time online games when using bluetootch controllers...

1) Well then apparently all you're talking about is allowing to output in 720p or 1080p, you didn't specify that...
In that case, I still don't think that makes sense.  How exactly is Nintendo supposed to make games that are designed for 480p, to suddenly jump to 720p or heaven forbid 1080p?  If the games are still supposed to work on the old Wii, they would not look good in 720/1080p...they would not look good at all. It would need some massive upscaling magic.

2) see my edit, and yes, people buy the new versions if they're better.  I bought both a GBA and GBA SP, and I have a DS Lite...and perhaps my friends would get a Wii HD if it could play all games, but the point is, a Wii HD just can't exist...it would look like crap if it had to accomodate the old Wii and the new Wii.

And I was talking to the OP when I said someone said Wii demand would decrease in 2009, "I see many predictions for Wii market resistence heading into 2009."

And the DS Lite sells more now because it's sleek and sexy, basically. Not because of its backlights...though it certainly needs them.  And again...backlights are a simple fix...adding much higher resolutions capabilities to your console is not.  You can't just say, "I want Wii to have 1080p output," tack on some magic HDMI port and say you're done.  It requires more graphical power to look good as well.

What is there to specify?  The entire discussion is about the current Wii going HD, not new hardware.  How did you not get on the same page, exactly?  And, just look at Sony for reference, they could just have the machine upscale the images.  Very little gain, but as I've said it doesn't take much to convince a Nintendo fan to buy the same hardware a second time.  Really, the only part of their hardware that'd really need any changing is the GPU.

 Ooop, and there you go.  If Nintendo had to change any of its hardware, even the GPU, you wouldn't be able to play new games that utilize said GPU on an old Wii with a different GPU...it just doesn't work.

And again...why do I need to keep repeating myself...people bought DS Lites because of the style change...I didn't buy an original DS at all...it looked chunky and didn't seem much better than my GBA.  When the DS Lite came out, it seemed very new, fresh, and I was willing to get one right away...as were 30 million others or so.  I didn't buy a DS a second time, it was the first time...and I would not want to buy a second Wii.