Destroyer_of_knights has it nailed on the head.

Well what do we know about Nintendo, they only spend money when necessary/profitable and their main focus is gaming. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if the Wii's successor was built almost entirely around the GPU. In otherwords, the CPU is only marginally better than the 360's Xenon or as powerful as the PS3's CELL but the GPU is miles ahead of both consoles. As far as RAM goes, it don't think it'll be bottlenecked, unfortunately, they'll probably only use as much is required to run games in 1080p @ 60p.

It's possible, all of a sudden people have this "thing" where it's only Sony who makes powerful hardware. PS2 was the weakest last gen, who knows how next gen will turn out, Nintendo's next console could be the most powerful!

If they follow their current strategy, it will only be on par with PS3 and 360.

Nintendo HD...
It's going to be beautiful.

Next gen will be just a little more powerful than this one.
Even in five years, the price for HDplus games will be astronomical for the companies. So, imo, not a viable option to go for power yet.

On par?

The PS3 and 360 are still trying to catch up by adding motion controls so they can be on par with the Wii.   (I know, you only meant graphics / cpu).  Anyways, it's fairly clear it will be better than PS3 and 360, but probably not as good as PS4 or next XBOX.

Exactly. Because everyone knows the Wii has no graphics!

mmm dont think so, maybe just below how powerfull the 360 is. Ninty know they dont have to go the hole hog now so why change?

Depends on what you mean by more powerful.. PS2 is more powerful than XBOX, but xbox games are prettier. Im not gonna hold my breath on what the wii HD will be capable of- suffice to say it shd be 720p at this point, considering that ps360 cant output natively at 1080p themselves.

Any other guesses? Blu ray probably or some proprietary format, DVD9 is out though- since Smash bros takes up that much space. Movie playback? Dont bet on it. GC didn't support it, wii doesnt.. well not officially atleast.

Nintendo is EXTREMELY profit driven and it has served them well in the past-they are pretty much at their zenith right now. They havent had this kind of success since the NES. Sticking to the formula is whats gonna work for them.

The only way they may get into a "power rat-race" is if NATAL and "arc" are successes. Arc and wiimote are kinda complimentary so devs may like that more. The PS3 graphically is a pretty decent machine- GPU is aight, its main draw being the CELL. The wii wont have anything that powerful IMO.

Of course... by the time the next-gen comes, it will be dirt cheap to make PS3/360-level hardware.