That shouldn't take long!  ;)

I'd be pretty surprised if a successor wasn't launched November 2016.

I think the PS4 sort of kicked that in.

Wii U will be around a while. They still need to go through the DS library and copy'n'paste the touch screen functionality from those games into "new and unique" experiences on Wii U.

They they are new!  Because HD!

Except then people will complain about not having off tv play.

Not until it's maxed out, so the successor is coming out last year?  The hardware was obsolete the day the PS4 was released and Nintendo initially seemed to give up on the touchscreen within the first year.

Actually there is still a lot that can be done with the hardware by Nintendo, but that's only because Nintendo stuck themselves with Gamecube level hardware for over 10 years and seemingly went backwards in game design by getting a hard on for 2D platformers.  Think of really ambitious PS360 games like Last of Us, Skyrim, GTA V, the Mass Effect Trilogy, etc.  What has Nintendo made recently with the sort of scope of games like that?  Their recent work has been pretty subdued compared to past works.  Them maxing out the Wii U's hardware potential would require them to catch up on years and years of game design (though Monolith could get their quicker).  That only applies to Nintendo of course, as everyone who didn't get killed off last gen realized their full potential around the time the Wii U launched.  There's a good reason why the console has bombed.  Nintendo is releasing their first HD projects at the same time the PS3 and X360 had reached their peak.  It's like releasing Altered Beast in 1995 to go against Yoshi's Island.

Of course this doesn't matter at all.  The market will determine when the Wii U gets replaced and that means it's on its way out as we speak.  Nintendo is either hoping to replace this embarrassment as soon as they feel they can get away with it or they're huge idiots that will be bleeding money in a few years.  It could take years for Nintendo to max out the Wii U but the market isn't going to support a console that has effectively one developer working on it all that time.  They'll replace it when it's clear they financially have to and that will be well before they utilize it's full potential.

Deep down EVERY console's replacement was been set in motion by money and the Wii U will be no different.  Of course I expect Reggie to say such things.  He isn't going to tip off a replacement until they're ready to formally announce it.  Doing so now would kill any potential Christmas sales.  Of course they did exactly that with the 3DS for some dumb reason.  Anyway, talking about full potential sounds better than the more honest "we'll sell it until we feel we can't make money off it anymore and need to go with a new product."

Or you could try reading the article instead of regurgitating one of four things you say on these forums.
"The experiments that Shigeru Miyamoto showed at E3 show that there’s a lot of innovation to be mined with Wii U," Fils-Aime added. "We showed off the beginnings of a Zelda game coming to Wii U. We have a lot more content to create for the Wii U, but we’re always thinking about what’s coming next."

He's talking about maxing out creatively, not hardware power. Jebus, man...

Considering the Wii U's technical potential was maxed-out when The Last of Us was released on PS3 last year; its sales potential will be maxed out when Smash Bros. releases; and it has no more 3rd party support and barely any 1st party support, this shouldn't take long.  For better or worse, this is the Wii U's last major Christmas. Sure, it'll have Zelda in 2016 (and if you think it's coming out any sooner than that, you don't know Nintendo's incredibly inefficient Zelda development history very well), but this is the Wii U's last year of any relevance. We'll probably get teases of the new system next E3, with a formal announcement in 2016 with Zelda to send the Wii U off.

Interestingly, I finally got around to playing Phantom Hourglass a few months ago and I found the controls off-putting at first but by the time I was off to my third island, I had learned them and I actually liked them. Just because you have Parkinson's disease does not mean it controls poorly. I even found myself wishing at a couple points that more games had touchscreen controls like it. It's rather disappointing that the only experience I can have of that control scheme seems to only be found in the DS Zelda games. The thought occurred to me that it was a bit like the evolution of point and click PC games from the past but with more fluid movement. Regardless, I had multiple moments of self-awareness where I thought to myself about how clever and well I had been able to adapt to the touch controls and liked them. The game has other issues but, control wise, it's actually pretty sweet unless you're a kindergarten drop-out with an obsessive compulsive disorder keeping you from learning new things or accepting change. And no I'm not talking about Ian Sane or I'd have included rage-a-holic in that description.

And while Ian Sane probably thinks every Zelda game should stick to analogue stick and D-pad controls because his over-excited, shaky, sweaty hands were somehow able to operate the controller ok for half the time that he could finish it, I actually was able to appreciate and acknowledge the genius level ability of the developers at Nintendo for implementing touch screen controls into the game. If they had implemented regular controls, he'd have found something else to complain about with in regards to that game (and there are other more worthwhile and real causes to complain about in it) so saying the controls were the only thing holding back the game and using it to bolster his other lame complaints does not actually help his credibility or help proof whatever case he is making which just seems to be that he hates everything Nintendo has made or done for a decade now.

The fact that the developers challenged themselves to actually look at the hardware and see what they could come up with for new ideas and implemented a new controls scheme so well is something I think is actually rather laudable and praiseworthy over the blanket condemnation Ian will give to anything that's different. Most other companies were, are and will be lazy when it comes to utilizing new hardware features or thinking of new gameplay ideas. Look at the mass amount of first-person shooters being released these days and the complaints of them all lacking imagination or being generically the same. I was ready to pop in Spirit Tracks and play it as soon as I finished up Phantom Hourglass but held off as I've put my backlog in order of what to play next (hello Chrono Trigger. Finally, time to see what all the fuss is about). PH got me excited about Zelda games again. I hadn't played one since Twilight Princess which is at least 6 years ago. There's an example of Nintendo doing everything Ian wants. (Although he'll object that he didn't want a re-hash of OoT even though he will complain when they don't follow the blueprint created multiple console generations ago, that "creativity" is a bullshit word and maxing out the creativity of a system would involve making full use of the hardware power, all of which Twilight Princess does.) Twilight Princess burned me out of the Zelda franchise for awhile. At that point, I'd played Link to the Past, Wind Waker, OoT and then TP in about a 2-3 year span. For me, it is another reason why his rallying cry of Nintendo needing to stick to what they did before, copy their competitors and don't try new controls or ideas is crap. Their utilizing the touchscreen and implementing controls around it made the experience fresh and I'm back on the Zelda bandwagon. It does what Ian erroneously whines it doesn't do.

Nintendo isn't perfect. They get stuff wrong. I'm not always enamoured with Wii Motion controls in some games but that doesn't mean I reject motion controls or any other type of new control style like Touch screen controls because there are also times where I am enamoured with them and think they are better than a regular control scheme. See, I look at and judge games individually on what that specific game does because I can recognize that what one game does and how it operates can be quite different from another game whether it uses the same control method or not. I can enjoy a game like Smash 3DS which pushes the hardware to its limits just like I can appreciate Crosswords 3DS or Rhythm Thief which do not and have controls that deviate from the normal push button method used in Smash 3DS. Those latter games came about thanks to companies deviating from the established blueprint and trying to use new hardware features instead of sticking to the same old.

Or maybe I can appreciate these things because I have some modicum of skill playing video games and I'm not a piss-poor gamer like Ian Sane must be since he's been unable to adapt to anything past the 64/GC era judging by his repetitious complaints. It's getting hard to tell if that is just a blatant insult or the actual truth with him.

Ian Sane doesn't have any problem being repetitive (like Nintendo's best selling franchises amirite?!?!?!) so I guess I can be repetitive as well: Nintendo will tread water with the Wii U. Don't expect a successor any time soon. The console turns 2 years old in a few weeks. I fully expect Nintendo to ride with it for at least 2-3 more years. This strategy just points to that.

If the pinnacle of this industry is a zombie game with false emotion, I'm bailing out now.

ftfy

I kind of doubt the Wii U's successor will even be out in 2016.  The way things are going, 2016 is going to be all about the 3DS successor and getting there studio's ready for that.  The earliest a Wii U successor will come is 2017.

We went over this back in 2011 people when the 3DS came out when some thought for sure the Wii successor would come out that year as well.  Nintendo doesn't have the ability to release a brand new handheld device and home console in the same year.  This isn't 2001, when you have a much simpler system like the GBA that could easily pump out SNES port with a new home console like the Gamecube.

I think it'd make more sense to release the Wii V in 2016 and hold off on the 3DS successor until 2017.

The twist: 3DS and Wii U successor are the same platform.

Yeah, that's also a real possibility. I still think they'll give separate platforms one more go before they do that, though.

I don't care when it comes out, but I would wager 2017+. Nintendo is going to bleed money no matter what. What I hope from the Wii U successor is for them to maintain backwards compatibility because I hate how it was trashed this generation by everyone, but Nintendo who had only like one good game on the Wii I would use it for.

Although that would be the ideal timeframe, I just don't think Nintendo will be ready for that. With the struggles of HD development and the slow rate Nintendo have been trickling out titles for the Wii U, I just don't see them able to have top-quality games ready for a 2016 system launch. In order to spring back from irrelevance, they need to have at least two great games available at launch, as well as actually launching fully-realised hardware instead of the half-finished mess that was the Wii U and 3DS. They can't afford anything less.

I think November 2017 will be the earliest and even that date will be tough to manage. And the release schedule on Wii U for 2017 and 2016 will probably be barren as they prepare for that launch.

Nintendo are in a tough spot and need to be very careful about where they go from here. They need to come out swinging and get most things right in order to stay in the console business. I wish I could say I have faith that they can do that, but Nintendo have been seeming more and more clueless lately...

I agree.  Plus they have that New 3DS coming out so shouldn't that in theory be able to hold the fort for a little while?

It depends on how Nintendo reacted internally to Wii U's slow start. It obviously didn't panic and drop Wii U. However, the hardware division easily could have been instructed to get its ass in gear and prepare for a late 2016 launch. On the software side, while Nintendo decided to stay the course and finish up existing products, what to do after those projects are finished is the key to determining how soon we see a successor. The teams may be working on titles for Wii U's successor, or they may have splintered afterwards, with part of the team working on Wii U's successor and part working on Wii U titles. That may put Miyamoto's comment about spin-offs into perspective. For example, something like Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is using a ton of existing assets and likely doesn't require the entire Super Mario 3D World team. The Mario Kart team is working on Mario Kart 8 DLC which again, likely doesn't require the entire team. What has Retro Studios been doing since February? I think it can get a game out in two and a half/three years.

Didn't he say almost the same thing just before Wii support died out completely?  (Not kidding - I'm sure Reggie said something just before Wii support was fully shut down.  My take on this article is that we shouldn't expect any games going forward unless they've already been announced.)

Wii U gotta be extreme TO THE MAX