As far as Wii U goes, it's about as best they can do while still retaining the "Wii" name. If Nintendo truly wanted an evolution, it wouldn't have the "Wii" name attached, but there's too much risk there and they want guaranteed name recognition out the door. However, because of that, a sacrifice must be made in the fact many people will not see Nintendo's current showing (Wii U/3DS) as an evolution, but a stagnation of the same-old in new paint. That "many people" though, is subjective, and most likely not in top priority as a demographic.
Maybe next gen, a new name.
Maybe, but I don't think so. Today when people say HD it means 720p or 1080p. once you get above 1080p (such as 4K or 8K; two already buzzed about and one already seeing rollout) those are "above HD" and as they grow in adoption I think we'll use terms that differentiate them from HD.
Yes, which is what I meant when I said the marketing term "HD" is not future-proofed. There may very well be a new 'term' that will become the norm when we hit 4k/post-4k, and then whatever is called "HD" will be seen as old, kind of like DVD compared to Blu-Ray.
Let's hypothesize 4k is out in 2015, and the "Wii
HD" still has quite a few years before the next console. Not good for Nintendo.
The other possibility is that the "HD" term remains, and even though the consumer displays are getting huge resolution increases as the standard, "HD" is still the marketing term. That will cause even more confusion looking at old products that are also labeled "HD", and consumers won't know "new HD" from "old HD". A little unrelated but there's even that confusion today with iPhone/Windows Phone games being toted with "HD" at the end of the name, for example "Assassin's Creed HD" (which is not even 720p, "HD" is being used purely as marketing at this point). So what is the console/PC Assassin's Creed then, not HD? The HD term as a marketing term has gone out of control and the average consumer is probably very confused. Well, this confusion is good for exploitation, because Bose and Monster are still in business, right?