Nintendo themselves have stated that they will do an HD system, when HD has become more standard.

Hrmmm, Wii can use DVD9? So the Wii optic disc being a standard DVD instead of DVD9 means there may be Wii game optic discs in the future that are DVD9?

Interesting thread...

On one side we have a discussion where people generalized on the dumbness of Gamestop employees (hoping you don't count EB Games employees because I'm one of these and we are three person in the store who are really honest with custommers).

On an other side we have a discussion about Nintendo's graphics...

We can made it clear; there's somes IP like Metroid or Zelda who can be subect of realistic graphics, on the other hand we have others IP like Mario who are based on artistic design, does that make a problem to someone ???

And finally we have the principale thread about the future of Nintendo...

I remember we many people were saying that Nintendo will leave the hardware for the software only. Even if the GameCube was the last one in the last gen, it was a financial success for Nintendo, so no the industry without Nintendo is really far far away, particulary if we take in account all the money they have made with as of now, the 1st party games and the Virtual Console.

I could actually see a return to a memory based distribution method ...

Because of the quantity of flash based memory on the market the ability to produce a massive ammount of memory at an affordable price is currently available; as a guess you could probably produce game cartridges with 1GB to 2GB of ROM today without (drastically) increasing the price of games. In 2011 this will probably be 8GB to 16GB and by 2016 you may be able to produce a game cartridge in the 100GB range ...

Didn't Hiroshi Yamauchi say something about DS before it was released, that if it succeeds, it's heaven for them, but if not, they don't know what to do?

Anyway, if i recall, Nintendo announced sometime before DS, that they are going to release 5 consoles (within few years), 3 portable and 2 home consoles. It's possible, that GBA SP was one of them, but DS and GBA micro has been released after that. There have been a "plan B" for the Wii, so that's propably the second home console, N was talking about. But since Wii sells so good, we are not going to see that other console. But, theres a possibility that Nintendo has somekind of gaming machine under development, which combines portability and home consoles. Just think how Nintendo likes connectibility. You could link GBA and GC (Four Swords is one of the best examples), Wii and DS can link via Wi-Fi... So i see it very possible, that they could release a gaming device, that can be as well portable and home console (there was even this kind of rumor about Wii before its release).

@HappySqurriel: I would like to see cartriges back, but unfortunately discs are so much cheaper to make, that it won't propably happen (unless extremely small cartrige, with massive storage is released). DS does well with cartriges, but it's because it's so popular and Sony chose discs, for PSP, that are pretty expensive.

I believe I read several months ago that the Wii does actually contain a regular DVD9 player, it just doesn't have a hardware decoder. The initial plan was to have DVD ready out of the box, but Nintendo scrapped that to keep the cost down. Sonic Solutions (Roxio) was tapped to handle the DVD player component as far back as mid-2006, and this was confirmed by Sonic and even Nintendo.  It's possible that DVD playback on the Wii could be as simple as a firmware release and a DVD player channel software download.

sorry it´s late and I don´t feel like reading the whole thread, just wanted to say

Yes, the Wii is Nintendo´s last console.....with competition, haha jokes on you suckers...whait who am I insulting?  

EB.. you mean the place with the staff that told me... Metroid Prime 3 was for the Xbox360... and that Samus was part of Microsofts gaming division.. (Yes the whole staff told me this)

No... no company ever takes one of it's only focuses(hardware 1 software 2) and does away with it... it'd be like Starbucks no longer serving coffee but giving people the other stuff. Or Hess deciding it's no longer pumping gas...

the whole staff said that ?

Maybe the good staff are only in Quebec.

Maybe you were just unlucky and they were all idiots. It remember me last summer we hire a girl, she was certain that Mario was on 360. Two week after she was gone. So yes ther is somes idiots, but don't EB and Gamestop staff in the same bag.

Regarding the OP:

Man, this isn't even just bullshit, this is gift-wrapped bullshit.