This is slightly tangential, but one of the reasons I was so excited about the original Wii was because I got the impression Nintendo would do more to distance themselves from the 5 year hardware cycle, since their main message with the console was "it's about software more than anything".
I also figured they'd support it longer than they did their previous efforts seeing as it was by far the most successful. For better or for worse, I was wrong. But the fundamental problem of having a 5 or 6 year cycle remains, and of the big three manufacturers, Nintendo suffer from it the most. Not only because they are the smallest company with the most limited resources in terms of manpower, but also because they have to support both a handheld and a console at any given time.
This leaves me quite surprised that they would want to continue going in this direction. For a games company to spend two out of every five years focusing a substantial part of their efforts on hardware development, OS development and so on, there should come a time when they realize it's interfering with their main business.
Ideally, Nintendo should always have 90% of their (development) manpower working on new games, but it seems lately they have to devote more and more time to planning and developing hardware, infrastructure, peripherals, OSs, system updates, updating emulators for VC etc, when these are all things the majority of consumers will basically take for granted.