Great posts Jikayaki!
I've been reading the GAF rumour thread all week and it started out as a good thread for info but has gone to the pits of hell with people thinking Ninty will ditch motion controls and go back to 'normal' controls for the 'hardcore' gamers.
I'm pretty sure the 'going hardcore' rumours just mean Nintendo is trying to get better third party support along with their first party offerings, not that they are going to become more like Sony and MS.
I don't think motion controls will be dropped at all. I'm just waiting to see what that dual analog rumour meant.
Nintendo going "hardcore" doesn't surprise me for the most part I expected a strategy from Nintendo much like the 3DS in their next console. Nintendo wants to be the PS2 of next generation and cash in on both hardcore and casual gamers. Motion controls I don't think have been dropped some rumors from Edge point to it carrying over to this new console. I believe Nintendo is going to make two primary controllers for the console this Gameboy thing and an improved Wii remote. For the rumored touchscreen Gameboy-like controller to work its going to have to either upgrade to Bluetooth 3.0 or utilize a cheaper alternative. Pair a modified Wii remote + with Bluetooth 3.0 and a better camera and realistically it should be a sizable upgrade over the Wii's motion control. I doubt an upgraded Wii remote + would cost much to manufacture more than likely something like $18 including a nunchuk depending on the camera they use to replace the one in the Wii remote.
i agree with this, games are only going to take longer to make with the hardware they will be dropping. Unless they want their gamers to suffer droughts all through the generation, they will have to make sure they are getting third party ports to fill in the blank spaces.
I'm expecting them to do a little expanding of their studios, maybe buy up some new ones, but I still think they will need better third party support.
To my knowledge several studios including Retro are expanding. Nintendo is creating a new R&D studio as well and at Nintendo often these studios are used for making games not merely software and hardware R&D.