Nintendo made no secret of their interest in 3-D this week when they unveiled the 3DS at E3. They kept their primary media event's hardware focus on portable gaming, though, and anyone expecting to get a glimpse of their console future walked away with "Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword" and "Donkey Kong Country Returns" announcements, but nothing about a Wii 2. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata shared a rare insight into what's going on behind the scenes in a new interview, though, and the 3DS may not be the only venue where his company decides to play around with a third dimension.
"If you display a 3-D image, the image quality becomes extremely bad, so we'd probably do it with the next system," Iwata told the Japanese newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun, according to a translation post on Andriasang. "We're thinking that the timing should be once the 3-D television adoption rates crosses the 30-percent mark. We're looking at the adoption trends."
Given that 3-D TV sets are just now shipping, don't expect Nintendo to have good data about those trends anytime soon, and besides, Iwata thinks the Wii has plenty of life to live.
"I do not think that there is an immediate need to replace the Wii console," he told Reuters at E3 through a translator. "But of course, at some point in the future, the need will arise."
Do you think Nintendo will end up going 3-D with their next console? How well do you think 3-D TV's will fare with consumers? Share your predictions in the comment section below.