Would you be willing to stand another one of those?

Hell no, thats worse than Zelda/Mario!

what did you use to clean that gunk with? I'd love to know for my own future screen-spooges! *laugh*

what kind of jelly?!

Peanut jelly.

Testes, testes, one, two, three !?!

you were watching misteryo?!

Personally, I never viewed some of the innovations Nintendo brought forth (though anyone who knows history realises they weren't that innovative; 'nothing new under the sun', after all) as 'gimmicks' (though the things they tried with the 3DS and Wii U certainly ended up being that). Some people on the internet seem to think that just because the touch screen and motion controls ended up having mostly mundane utility that that makes them 'gimmicks'. Personally, however, I think they ended up being perfectly legitimate input methods with their own advantages that ended up enhancing the experience of playing certain types of games (strategy and RPG games in case of the former, dancing and console shooter games in case of the latter).

But getting back to the matter at hand, based on what we've learned so far, the most likely main 'gimmick' is going to be greater compatibility/convergence between their next home console and handheld. This doesn't mean a home console and handheld hybrid (Nintendo has refuted this multiple times and it would be an awful idea to begin with), but a home console component and handheld component that share a similar architecture and a mostly similar library of games, but that would still allow developers to choose which component to develop for.

Overall, I don't think the main features of the NX will be anything radical or 'revolutionary', but rather Nintendo-style changes and incremental improvements. I'm not sure if any of those hardware patents will actually pan out; after all, companies patent many things, regardless if they end up actually using them or not. However, the scroll wheel buttons strike me as something that isn't that unlikely, since it offers some decent practical applications and doesn't conflict much with standard input methods. I don't know if the 'gimmick' in particular is worth hiding (and assuming the main 'gimmick' really is what I mentioned above, they've already done a poor job of hiding it to begin with), but I do think it's beneficial for Nintendo to keep any information regarding the system close to its chest just to keep the competition in the dark. Besides, even if Sony didn't copy the gamepad, they have certainly copied Nintendo numerous times in the past. =P That's difficult to tell without knowing what the system even is. But as long as it has quality software, it should stand just fine, since any experience it might offer is likely to be quite different from those two. VR in particular doesn't pose a threat — VR itself is plagued with numerous problems when it comes to commercial viability. I can't really predict what Nintendo will do. They can be quite unpredictable....for better or worse. But there is one thing I'm quite certain of. Nintendo is not likely to go the way of Sega. if they stop developing their own hardware, chances are that they will quit the video game market entirely.