The company says it will officially unveil the next generation of Wii at the E3 games expo in June. The console is expected to be launched some time in 2012. This kind of mega-long lead time is not uncommon in the games industry since they need so much advance buy in from game developers that there’s no point in keeping the cat in the bag. Something kind of surprising here is the controllers.

The Wii successor is also suspected of using a novel controller interface which marries a traditional d-pad-and-buttons scheme with a large touch-screen input. Kotaku also reported that while the new console will feature a new controller, it will also support Wii Remote-style controllers.

Seems like an odd retreat. The Wii became a huge hit by having simple controls and bailing out of the graphics war being fought by Sony and Microsoft. Instead, it was just fun. But Nintendo is already boasting about a bigger more powerful machine than anything already out there. So it’s like they’re falling back into that same old arms race.

Sony and Microsoft are reportedly prepping the next PlayStation and Xbox for release in 2014.