http://wiiudaily.com/2012/04/wii-u-launch-date-set-for-november-18-2012-report/

Not officially confirmed at this point, but all signs point to yes. The date is exactly 11 years after the release of the Gamecube and just shy of 6 years since the release of the Wii.

Get saving people.

I'm gonna have to flag this as a rumor for now buddy. It's not truly a confirmation yet. But I appreciate your effort! And I even used your spelling of rumor! ~ DrFinkelstein

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Fine date, by me, at least. It's time enough to enjoy the Wii a bit more, get used with the 3DS, make people think a bit more about getting the new consoles and it's just before the holidays.
But I still think Nintendo could wait a bit more to release a new console and focus on getting more 3rd party support, working on the upcoming launch titles and on making the WiiU's release a groundbreaking one.

Also, waiting for the graphical material to get cheaper wouldn't hurt either. That also works for Sony and Microsoft.

I really hope this is bunk. November is too late in the year. September release please!

@Brick Nintendo practically handed the 3DS launch lineup on a silver platter to third-parties, and look how well that turned out. I just don't see people buying a Wii U for the third-party games, unless they don't have a PS360, in which case it doesn't matter what month the system launches. But, I also don't think it was ever about the numbers. Third-party games didn't come to the Wii because the hardware wasn't capable enough to handle the games they wanted to make, but that excuse makes them sound lazy. So, they came up with other reasons why they didn't release games on the Wii, sales being one of them. Low sales haven't stopped them from releasing games on the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC. Plus, games like Resident Evil 4 sold over a million copies on the Wii, but did the Wii get Resident Evil 5? Nope.

Third-parties are playing a rigged game, and if the sales excuse no longer flies, they'll find some other reason to not develop on a Nintendo platform. So, I don't get caught up in the numbers, and I just buy whatever game I want to play on whatever platform I want it on. I suggest everyone else do the same, and the reason to buy a game shouldn't be because it may or may not lead to other games you may want in the future. That's like a hostage situation, and we shouldn't put ourselves in that position.

@Mop it up

Actually, I'd say developer laziness is what earned them low sales on Wii to start with.

I agree that major 3rd parties didn't come to Wii because the platform wasn't conducive to the types of games they wanted to make. But would you call that lazy? I'd call it motivated to reach a higher vision.

If they were lazy then they all would have jumped on board the Wii-boat when it was selling gangbusters and just developed "last gen" games for it exclusively, pushing no technical boundaries. That would have been lazy.

What they did instead was throw bush-league teams on to Wii projects with abysmal budgets, in affect offering crap support. 3rd-parties got burned on Wii because they didn't even bring their A game and were rewarded in turn with low sales. Now that was lazy.

@New Forms No, I don't think it's lazy to skip the Wii if a company has an ambitious game in mind that wouldn't work on the Wii. I just think that third-parties believed that reason would give them a negative perception from the Wii audience, whether it's true or not. "We don't think your platform is good enough" is probably the message they thought it'd send, and they wanted Wii owners to buy the games they did release, so they didn't want to make it sound like an inferior platform.

And if a company doesn't want to make games for the Wii U for whatever reason, they will find some reason to justify it, even if the sales are good.

The majority of 3rd parties didn't come to the Wii not because of the platform itself (developers don't mind making handheld, downloadable, even... ew... iPhone games if there is money to be had, tech be damned) but because the platform pretty much had to be developed for exclusively, whereas they could make PS3/360/PC games elsewhere.