Nintendo is constantly thinking about or actively planning for new hardware. What form that hardware will take, however, is anybody's guess. And Nintendo has proven to be quite unpredictable; who would have guessed that they'd build a handheld with dual screens or trade in traditional controls for motion sensing?

In a recent interview with  Popular Mechanics, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto was asked about Nintendo's future direction with hardware and how important motion sensing controls would be for the company's next platform. Miyamoto responded, "With both the Wii remote itself and Wii MotionPlus, 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."

Miyamoto also  addressed Nintendo's stance on HD graphics at a recent roundtable event attended by IndustryGamers. Based on his recent comments, we'd guess that Nintendo's next console will feature even more precise motion sensing along with HD graphics, all packed into a compact form factor. Of course, the company will probably also do something that seems absolutely crazy to us at first, and then sells a boatload for the company in the end. 

Elsewhere in the interview, Miyamoto talked about the convergence of technology with video games and other devices. Things have come a long way since the days when consoles were viewed as toys, he said.

"I think originally video-game systems were viewed as a toy, and they were something you played with. Whereas now I think we're starting to see a blurring of the lines, where, obviously, the internal guts of a video-game system is essentially a computer, and we're gradually seeing video games moving beyond simply entertainment into other aspects of everyday life. And I think what video games benefit from is an intuitive interface that's easy to understand, where the controller is a little bit more familiar and easier to use than the interface of a typical computer," he said. "As time goes on, I think we're going to see how the system of the video-game console and this interactive interface is going to gradually bleed in to other elements of, say, home electronics and daily life. For example, in Japan the Wii itself has a TV guide channel that Wii owners can download to their Wii. And for a lot of people in Japan who own a Wii, that TV guide channel is a lot more convenient and easier to use than a typical TV guide service."