Nintendo’s resident genius, Shigeru Miyamoto, has been ruminating, cogitating and having a good old think about the future of the Wii. It’ll probably be more compact and more cost efficient, he says.

This semi-revelation comes via the pages of Popular Mechanics, in which the interviewer coaxes the following from the reliably affable Mr. M:

“With both the Wii remote itself and Wii Motion Plus, what we've been able to do is introduce an interface that is both I think appealing and at the right price for a broad audience. And 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.”

So, it looks like Nintendo isn’t thinking too far outside the box for Wii MKII in terms of how it works, but it will likely be smaller and cheaper to manufacture. Whether that means cheaper to purchase too remains to be seen. Likewise it’s an unknown whether the next Wii console will, as rumoured, support HD. Shiggsy is certainly careful not to speculate on this occasion, although he has talked about his desire to “take advantage” of such technology in another interview recently.

Otherwise, he’s chatty as ever, revealing more about New Super Mario Bros. Wii, that nobody threw fireballs or barrels at him when he was growing up (what, really?) and that he’s currently hard at work on creating what he calls the “next Zelda game”. It doesn’t look like Miyamoto is referring to The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks either, since he then refuses to provide any further details about the game. The big teaser.

Anyway, it’s all good stuff. Read more at popularmechanics.com.