Next Wii to be smaller and cheaper?

Shigeru Miyamoto has said he is content for Nintendo consoles of the future to behave like the Wii. The main design-push will go into making consoles smaller and even more profitable.

"While we don't have any concrete plans for what we'll be doing with hardware in the future, what I can say is that - my guess is that because we found this interface to be so interesting, I think it would be likely that we would try to make that same functionality perhaps more compact and perhaps even more cost-efficient," Miyamoto told Popular Mechanics (via Gamasutra).

The key to the current Wii interface's success, said Miyamoto, was appealing to a broad audience at the "right price".

Nintendo's next console is heavily rumoured to be an HD update of the Wii, presumably with backwards compatibility and upscaling. Miyamoto, doing his press-rounds recently, added fuel to the fire when explaining that Nintendo was "in step" with HD technology progression and would look to "take advantage" of such technology.

For the moment, however, Nintendo has clammed shut. The next time we're likely to hear about such projects - including the Zelda game Miyamoto is "focusing on" - will be at next year's E3.