The past year has seen much rumors and speculation regarding the Wii's eventual successor, with many believing that a "Wii HD" is on its way. The speculation of the new console coming sometime between 2010 and 2011, however, was almost proved false when president of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata, saying that a new console is still a ways off back in August. And while that still stands currently, it doesn't necessarily mean that a new console isn't in the works.

As a recent statement from Nintendo creative lead Shigeru Miyamoto has offered a small taste of what we may expect to see from the as of yet unannounced console.

"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," he said during in interview with Popular Mechanics. "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."

Obviously the system is still in the early planning stages currently, as evident by how they "don't have any concrete plans" yet. But his comment on making it more "compact" is intriguing. As the current host of the motion functionality, the Wii remote, is rather compact already, so what could possibly be done to increase that aspect, and what would the benefit for doing so be?

If it's related to the "more cost-efficient" remark he made, then I suppose I could see the benefits of this. As if it can reduce the cost of device, that could help them in a variety of ways, such as possibly increasing the profitability of said device.

Though given his comment on there being no set plans currently, this could (and probably is) just one of the many possible things they could do with the system, and might not see fruition. That said, the fact that a new console is in the works, gives a glimmer of truth to the aforementioned predictions made by analysts and industry members alike. But whether or not a "Wii HD" will be coming in 2011 or so, remains to be seen.