watch & hear the ENTIRE interview here: http://tinyurl.com/z9gee

some of the key Q&A

Q.)
Tell me how far back you guys went in thinking of  this controller  and
system.  how soon after the gamecube did you guys start thinking  about
your next console and when did....

Perrin:

"we start before....when something is being produced we're already
working on the idea for the next...so um... but we probably spent a
good 6,7, 8 months doing the "race" as well,
and then all of a sudden we said this not even really  even what
consumers in a mass way,  want. you're gonna get your hardcore  very
small  percentage.... what can we do to make sure this has  state of
the art technology and all the amazing stuff in it,  and i mean, don't,
dont..... this is a ferrari under the hood,  no confusion about that.
we wanna make sure people really understand  that. and then we went and
changed direction, cause we felt,
in order to keep the industry really healthy, there has to be a  right
turn somewhere."

Q.)  is this the last console Nintnedo's gonna make?

Perrin:  "I highly doubt it, I highly doubt it."

when will we see another handheld, any idea?

Perrin: "when it's time."

___________________________________________________________________________

okay... it sounds to me that before Gamecube came out they started
working on the next console and started in the traditional way, "the
race" as she said, to make the most powerful chips possible.  then they
decided this wasn't healthy for anyone (especially Nintendo).... so
while they continued to make a reasonably powerful console, at least by
last-gen standards, they decided their focus would be on a totally new
direction for playing games.   she stressed however, that Wii is
"ferrari under the hood" and I believe that for SDTV resolution, it
really is.   months and months ago, one of ATI's main guys said what we
had seen of Wii's graphics was just the tip of the iceberg.   it's my
belief that the graphics displayed in Wii games so far, are largely
"Gamecube Plus" graphics, due to the development environment being
Gamecube based.  the ATI Hollywood GPU remains a near-total mystery to
even the hardcore graphics observers on boards like Beyond3D, at least
as far as what is "public".  what isn't under NDA, and that's very
little.

the thing that's interesting to me is, as far as graphics power, the
Wii doesn't have to burn GPU performance blasting off into HDTV
resolution. the lowest HD resolution, 720p, requires 3 times the
performance just to achive that resolution, before the graphics
themselves can be improved.  THAT guys, is WHY  Xbox 360 and PS3 games
do not look to be a huge huge leap beyond Xbox and Gamecube games.
most of Xbox 360 and PS3's extra power is spent getting to HDTV level
resolution. there is NOT enough left over performance beyond that to
get a huge leap in actual graphics.

once we finally see what Wii can do visually, starting next year, I
think we might be surprised that Wii can offer some very good visuals.
more than just "Gamecube 1.5"  at SDTV resolution, Wii is not going to
be miles behind Xbox 360 and PS3 because those consoles will be wasting
much of their power going to 720p or 1080i, and in the case of some PS3
games, 1080p.

beyond Wii,  Nintendo is obviously well into the idea process of
creating their next console. I am sure that not everything that they
were thinking about for Wii, made it into the final design. many of
those ideas will be carried over into the next console, which you might
wanna call WiiHD or Super Wii or whatever.  Nintendo's president,
Iwata, said that Nintendo WILL introduce an HD console sometime in the
future.  maybe WiiHD will be to Wii what the SNES was to NES.   or
maybe Nintendo will offer a huge leap in everything again, as they did
when they went from SNES to Nintendo64.  who knows.  all wii know is
that Nintendo is not going away as a console provider.