Mario creator, Nintendo icon, and all-around ruler of the gaming universe Shigeru Miyamoto recently sat down with Popular Mechanics for an interview about, among other things, the origins of Mario and Link, the legitimacy of blowing in old NES games to get them to work, and to show off New Super Mario Bros. Wii.  The whole interview is pretty interesting, and worth checking out, but the highlight was Miyamoto’s discussion on the future of Nintendo consoles.

"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," said Miyamoto. "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."

It’s not at all surprising to hear that Nintendo will continue to focus on motion-controls, especially considering the sales of the Wii (approx. 479 trillion units at the time of this writing), but this is the first time we’ve heard Nintendo actually state as much.  As for the “more compact and perhaps even more cost-efficient” part, I can only assume that this means the next Wii Motion controller could be smaller and include the Wii Motion Plus technology built in.

With the unbelievable success Nintendo has had this generation, it’s easy to see them dominating the market when the next wave of home consoles hits, especially if they can continue the success they’ve had with casual and non-traditional gamers while recapturing a significant portion of the hardcore audience.  If that happens, there may not be any console wars to speak of in the future.