We've extracted all the details from the rumour so you don't have to

With E3 2011 just weeks away, there's still plenty of time for rumours and claims from anonymous sources to surface about Nintendo's next home console.

Kotaku's sources have revealed that the console will supposedly have 8 gigabytes of on-board flash memory instead of a more traditional hard drive, a significant jump from the 512 megabytes that's inside the Wii. The console will also support saving to SD cards, making it much easier to patch games and provide additional content such as extra maps for first-person shooters.

Various reports have claimed that the new console will be able to output HD graphics, and whether it's 1080i or 1080p, either resolution will be more impressive than the 480p that the Wii is capable of. The disc format will supposedly be able to contain 25 gigabytes of data, roughly three times the amount of a dual-layer DVD and equal to that of a single-layer Blu-ray disc.

If the console does indeed have 8 gigabytes of flash memory, let's hope there will be a way to upgrade it to a more substantial number. With streaming services like Netflix and the BBC iPlayer already on the Wii, with the former coming to the 3DS too, Nintendo might be happy to just provide users the ability to stream media as opposed to a high-capacity hard drive to store any downloaded content.

We'll see how much of these rumours are true when E3 kicks off early June.

[source uk.kotaku.com]