It really seems to me that Fermi is just to big, it has so much more arch added in there for Cuda based hardware that it is bigger then it needs to be to work as a gaming card.

I remember when GTX 280 came out my first reaction was, its so big where can they go from here, if it gets any bigger its just not going to work. That reaction was based on really nothing save that my first GTX 280 ran much hotter then I expected and required a second loop to keep my CPU at the temps I wanted.

If in fact Fermi is just too big to make then where does Nvidia go from here?

Do they
A, Rework a smaller version for late 2010, maybe throw out some of the CUDA stuff that was not needed for the gaming market, and then double up like the HD 5970 for the top card?
Problem: Nvidia will be fighting ATI in its own backyard, dual GPU cards is kinda ATI's thing, and from my own experiences with the 5970, ATI has it down. The 5970 is also sitting at the 300W PCIE wall, and though you can break it with over-clocking OEM's don't want to break it for legal reasons. Unless Fermi has better performance per watt, a dual Fermi card will be slower un over-clocked and thus slower at the OEM lvl.

B, Start shrinking down Fermi to 28nm and not release anything till 2011?
Problem: ATI will have something new out by then, maybe the 6XXX cards or by that point 7XXX cards, leaving Nvidia one to two generations behind.

C Find what chips work, throw them on boards with insane cooling just to beat the 5870 by around 10 to 20 % and use the performance crown to sell re-branded G92 based cards to the masses?
Problem: People may catch on and not buy re-branded stuff, and with Win 7 selling so well and OEM's wanting to give everyone DirectX 11, re-branded G92 cards won't cut it in the OEM market. Nvidias market share could crash and the money and time that would have been set aside to help shrink Fermi down to 28nm, will have been used to make a broken card almost work.

I have been holding off getting a 5870 until the MSI lighting version is out, but a part of me was holding off to see how Fermi would do, and I feel I am not alone in that. Now however I feel no reason to wait, my 4870X2 I use most days is no longer new and shiny, and there are a few games where it chokes up a bit, mostly due to CF issues. There is simply no longer a reason to wait, Fermi is not going to be better then a 5870 from the looks of it, and if it is, it will be too hot, and take way to much power to make the small increase worth it.

I hate saying it, but Nvidia has failed with Fermi, even if it comes out and it works, sorta, it is just to late to be called a success, no matter what. It sucks I know, but its about time we and Nvidia admit that Fermi was a bit to much to try to build on 40nm, and the inability of Nvidia to admit and realize this soon enough may have hurt them more then any of us could have expected or predicted.