Whether you're calling it Project Café or Wii 2, the fact is (as we understand it) that Nintendo is preparing to launch a new console in the next year or so. Reports peg the announcement as coming at or before E3 in June, and hopefully the tidal wave of rumors will spur the company to do it sooner rather than later. Probably not though. Nintendo veteran Shigeru Miyamoto isn't willing to talk about it, as a recent interview with the "Zelda" and "Mario" creator made clear.
"Don't ask!" he told Edge in an interview (via CVG. "Even when the Wii launched we were developing new hardware, work on 3DS had already started. It's a matter of when we announce it."
Asked if we can at least expect to hear the official announcement at E3, Shiggy replied, "Please wait. Be patient until we decide."
No surprises here at all, of course. Miyamoto's not going to spill the details when a formal announcement has yet to be made. And his comments about the 3DS already being in development when the Wii launched are on the mark; creating this hardware is a time-consuming process. You can bet that Microsoft and Sony both have some amount of work done on whatever their respective console follow-ups will be, if not early theoretical plans for the follow-ups to those follow-ups.
The one thing we can take from Miyamoto's comments is his indirect confirmation that an announcement was coming. Officially, any talk of a Wii 2 is still just a rumor. Nintendo hasn't announced anything. It is pretty much a certainty that a console announcement is coming based on the volume of reports hinting at it and the reliability of some of those sources, but it won't be truly, verifiably real until Nintendo makes it so.
That said, I can't wait to see what this touchscreen-equipped controller looks like.