It's time we talked about this.
Most of the rumors come from
this French website, though IGN claims they have anonymous sources of their own. But IGN is also IGN, so yeah.
What they agree on:
- More powerful than the 360 (either "significantly more" or "just a notch higher")
- Standard PS-style controller with motion controls, also a 6-inch touchscreen (the French website calls it a "Super VMU on steroids")
- Games can be streamed from the Café to the controller, but probably only when the Café is on and within a certain distance.
- Backwards compatible with Wii games, controllers, and peripherals
- The Café and probably some Café games will be shown at E3, but probably not playably
- No one's announced a Hot Café mod for it yet
If this is true, and Nintendo does it for a reasonable price, it could end up being a lot like the 16-bit generation, neh? The Wii is the NES, the 360 is the Genesis, the PS3 is whatever maybe a TurboGrafx, and the Café is the SNES.
Sony and Microsoft won't be putting out new consoles any time soon -- Move and Kinect are their next-gen consoles. So we'll end up with three consoles, all with HD graphics and motion controls, with Nintendo having the best motion controls and quite possibly the best graphics, with their competitors in no position to release new consoles (they just invested way too much in getting up to speed with motion controls, and development costs are too high as it is).
This would be pretty sweet if true and not expensive.