I really don't even see the point of speculating on this yet. There are about a million unknown factors which could change the equation considerably. We are not even entering the territory of being able to make a barely educated guestimate.

If they go HD next gen, then it might end up near 360's graphics, thats actually aiming very high : / , one can only dream. If you want cutting edge big horse power 3D graphics, ignore the Wii.

They will probably be around the PS3 power but able to do a lot more bc Nintendo is a hell of a lot more efficent with their tech than either m$ or Sony

People are acting like Nintendo is now anti-graphics because of one system that broke the trend.

I have no doubt in my mind that Wii will be much more powerful than the PS3, because the technology will be cheap next time around. Most of the cost for Wii came from the new control scheme, thats where all the R & D went. Now that they have the control basics, they can refine it a little, combine everything into one nice package (maybe motionplus in the nunchuk). and the spend the rest of their time on hardware and software. Nintendo knows that graphics are the primary reason why 3rd parties won't develop on Wii (no it's not because "core games don't sell" that's just a cover).

Their next system will be $299 and have the same control system as Wii, only more refined, will have 1080P, and be close to the power of MS and Sonys next system, you can quote me on this.

The thing that makes me a little skeptical about Nintendo going HD and all guns next gen for 1080p is the fact that we have not heard about large higherings at Nintendo yet and that would be one indicator of a lot of R/D and development into the next console bc you just need more people to create high qualitly HD software well and N does everything well, with a few exceptions of course.

Why do you keep thinking it would jump in price to that high? Just because Wii broke the $200 trend, Nintendo is now about jaking up the price?

I would say the specs really don't matter so much. If it exists it will perform reasonably well with likely 4 x 1024 Mbit GDDR5 ram chips (512 MB ram) on a 64bit bus with 30-35GB/S throughput, some power efficient CPU and about the equivalent performance of a low end discrete GPU like the HD 53xx range of performance.

In many ways this gets to the heart of the issue, i.e. why would Nintendo add more graphical power when more graphical power = higher development costs, and Wii has proven that a huge chunk of consumers don't care about "HD" graphics anyway?

Nintendo's next system will probably output HD resolution, and the graphical power may incidentally be similar to the current systems or even more powerful than them...but odds are you'll never see Nintendo putting out the kind of pricey game presentations that we're seeing with titles like GTA 4 or MGS 4.

I think if the motion upgrade was the only way they got away with bad graphics. Speech and video upgrades are next and they are already going to be beaten by MS, so they will need to have a huge graphics upgrade as there next hook

Nintendo announced they were making a new R&D facility. That was months ago, so it's clear they are planning more stuff, and does at least likely include the Wii's successor.