Natal and the PS3 Wiimote pose no threat to Nintendo and Nintendo doesn't need to do anything about them. Nintendo created the motion control war and already won it. Nintendo is the home of fresh new ways to play games, whether it's motion controls, IR controls, or balance controls. MS and Sony are now playing on Nintendo's turf. That's not how you fight Nintendo. Microsoft should focus all their energy on XBox Live. That's their golden goose. They won the online gaming war, and everybody can tell PSN and trophies are a lame ripoff of Live, achievements, and gamerscore. But if they're all going to switch their focus to fight the greatest software developer in the world on their own turf... they're not going to win. But hey, in a couple months Sony will release "Motion Party" and we'll see if it can compete with Wii Play or Wii Sports or even Mario Party or Wario Ware or Carnival Games.

Nintendo's success has made it clear that you can win an entire generation with new ways to play and new ways to market. If HD graphics mattered, the XBox would have smoked the PS2, and the Wii wouldn't be the revolution that it is.

Probably not going to be hardware extension, because all the new stuff would have to travel via USB, it just slows everything down, like buying and feeding 10 cows, but you can only milk 2 or 3 forever, it would be so wasteful. HD will require more resource like RAM than the Wii have atm, all the anti-aliasing, textures etc on 3d games and the higher resolution will just need more VRAM and faster processor to play smoothly.

Go online with Internet Channel on the Wii and load any youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/xl/) , you'll notice the framerate is just terrible compared to watching it on your PC, sure youtube vids are flash based and the plugin used might not run the best on Wii, but thats just too far a margin from being good for even standard definition.

Exactly many are saying Nintendo will stick with the Wii untill it becomes the most successful console to date. However Sony and Microsoft are now both entering Nintendo's market and within the next few years could easily topple the Wii off its metaphorical pedistle. That being said I don't think a Wii HD ad on is plausable. It is far more likely that at E3 2011 we will see Nintendo's next console and the world will be in awe again!

Wrong.

You gotta understand that regular people bought the wii for motion controls.

I have to tell this once more: Regular people dont want to play Muramasa.

They want motion controls, they want to show it to the neighbours.

When the wii exploded, it was because of Wii Sports, the first showcase of motion controls. People were amazed. 

Now can you imagine what a new Xbox360 SKU, all Natal-oriented, with a competitive price can do with this market.

It will destroy the wii.

And lead this generation to a 7 to 10 years cycle

The only chance nintendo have is to release a barrage of excelent software that uses the Wii Motion Plus to the max.

Making clear that the natal technology, the future, its here already.

Unfortunally, nintendo aint showing any signs that is (really) worried about that. So, next year we will see another profit dive for nintendo.

I agree with what you say,

MS should concentrate on Live and make it free, or at least allow online MP(multiplayer) to be free and make a VIP account that gives you MP+ all the other extras.

MP online on Wii and PS3 is free. so to make the playing field even then they should give the consumers the choice for all the extras.

One can always imagine that the seventh gen doesn't exist, and then you have the most powerful current gen system with Wii.

Can Nintendo release a pricey, underwhelming, under-utilized peripheral that would limit potential buyers of a particular game, and still be graphically inferior to the HD consoles and PC? Sure.

This is what I was thinking as well. The motion control responses of Microsoft and Sony, however successful they end up being, are at least conscious efforts to outdo Nintendo's motion control. They are genuine competitive moves. Releasing a peripheral would not allow Wii to match the visuals of its competitors, so it wouldn't work at all as a competitive response. The graphics-concsious population will continue to gravitate towards PS360 while perhaps a very small number of potential consumers are affected by this. At best Nintendo will do it simply to make a small profit off the peripheral.

Sad but you do have a point,

I have a feeling that Natal will be MS ace, it's going to be on tv shows ( people love to watch others make an a$$ of them self) and Natal will be no different. The new X360 Sku with natal bundle and an aggressive price point will sell this.

Sony and the magic wand, well if this is an add on not packaged with the console then I don't see any real threat. Packaged with one and a game/demo then I can see the advertisements of the sort:

PS3

BluRay player

HD gaming system

Motion control ala wii

free online service

Does everything the others do and better!

Yeah, im not happy about it either.

Even with all recent mistakes, Nintendo still the only game company (and the only company) that has a place in my heart (ugg, so gay - cmon, people, cut me some slack, we all grew up with nintendo)

And i agree with you: cant see the PS3 as a real threat> People will look at it and say "eh, they trying to copy nintendo now"

But Natal´s technology is disruptive enough to warrant a purchase from an army of early adopters...

who will spread the word, show it to the neighbours, generate enough buzz to give it a spot on tv shows, etc etc.

But this will only happen if Natal shows up a) Fully funcitional, no glitches, and  b) with good bundled software.

Knowing microsoft and its agressive take on the industy, we can take these two points as a sure shot.