I think people took that top down view comment a little too seriously, Aonuma was most likely talking about the next handheld Zelda, and the reason they made WWHD was so it could help them with the HD development of Zelda Wii U.

If Zelda Wii U has top down, it would most likely be what OOT/MM/SS offered.

It's never too early to talk about the next generation, especially seeing how we already know some info about Nintendo's next gen console, this thread will be talking fully about what Nintendo has in store next gen, here is some things we know.

Nintendo is/was looking for a Lead Graphic Engineer for Next-Gen in America, here is the descreption of it.

Description of Duties

Nintendo Technology Development is looking for a lead graphics architect in the system-on-chip architecture group in Redmond, WA. The group is responsible for the architecture of Nintendo’s game console SoCs. The graphics architect plays a key role in determining the SoC architecture. The job responsibilities are:
Evaluate HW graphics (GPU) offerings from SoC solutions available in the market based on performance, power, and silicon area.
Evaluate the performance of the SoC solutions for both proprietary and standard graphics APIs.
Determine workloads and simulation models for both performance and power characteristics of GPUs.
Keep track of GPU architectural improvements in the industry and devise strategies to incorporate them for future Nintendo gaming platforms.
Act as the graphics architectural evangelist working with global Nintendo teams for future and on-going programs.
Work with external SoC vendors as the Nintendo focal point for graphics GPU architecture.
Should be prepared to work through architecture, design, validation, and bring-up stages of SoC design in cooperation with internal and external teams.

Summary of Requirements
The ideal candidate will have had experience working directly in a GPU architecture and design team with significant responsibilities.
Low power and SoC design experience would be a plus.
The candidate is expected to have good architectural insights and the ability to apply that for setting future graphics direction for Nintendo.
A bachelors degree (graduate degree preferred) in computer science/engineering or electrical engineering.
5+ years of lead or architectural role experience are required.

Nintendo talked about how they will want the Wii U and 3DS successor to connect to each other even more so then the Wii U and 3DS currentily do, Nintendo wants them to be very connected.

We also know that the Wii U successor will expand from the Wii U hardware, in what way exactly? Not 100% sure, but it will likely have something to do with Backwards compailbity.

Spec wise, we don't know anything, hopes however are for that the Wii U successor will have 16GB of ram, that's about 8x as much as the Wii U and about 2x as much as the PS4 and Xbox One, I'm not too knowledgeable to talk about specs so I'll let the people that do know start it off here.

Game wise? Who knows at this point, the Wii U successor won't release until at least Holiday 2017 so it's still a little while away, what might we expect?

Well, a new 3D Mario is possible, Zelda Wii U will hopefully be released in 2015 so Zelda 9th Gen will likely be 2 years in development by the time the Wii U successor releases, something from Retro, something from third parties as well.

Third Party wise? Nintendo really needs help, from the start of Wii U we were promised a change, we were told we would get actual good third party support for Wii U, that lasted about the year it released and then nothing, the Wii U third party wise is terrible and Nintendo really needs to change it for good, that should be a big point in it's successor.

Alright, discuss.