Take this for what you will, but IGN is reporting that a comment made by the esteemed Shigeru Miyamoto in an interview with Japan's Famitsu may indicate that the supposed "final design" of the Wii controller that we saw at E3 isn't so final after all. Responding to a question about problems the company had in developing the Wiimote, Miyamoto stated that in fact "we're still debating on the area of how many buttons to use," which could be taken to mean that Nintendo has PS3-like changes in mind for the controller before the console ships. Of course, it could just as easily mean that although the design has been finalized, the Wii development team still discusses its merits and detriments amongst themselves, and the fact that the interview was translated over from the native Japanese only further muddies the issue, as Miyamoto's comments may have been taken out of context or lost the meaning he intended. Like we said, this is all just pie-in-the-sky speculation for now, and we're mainly passing it along so you don't freak out if you go to pick up your new Wii in a few months and the controller doesn't look exactly like you've been daydreaming it would.

[Thanks, Dave Z.]

If you haven't already read the transcript of our interview with the inimitable Shigeru Miyamoto, we've gone to all the trouble of putting video of it online. Get his thoughts on everything from the Wii to the PS3's new controller, why the HD-era isn't quite here yet, and why the interface is where innovation is coming from.

Unfortunately, we're wrapping things up, preparing for the trip home from E3, so we didn't have time to cut this video up into bitesized chunks for you as of yet, however, we are working on a bittorrent feed of it and will be adding the bits and pieces soon. Until then, right-click and save the 542.2MB file.

Our very large video:
542.2MBs, 25:25 long, 480x360 3ivx Quicktime [link]

Make sure you also check out AOL Games' video interview with Miyamoto.

When we found out Shigeru Miyamoto wanted to give us a second round to ask him about the latest in the world of Nintendo here at E3, I found that same inner-child fanboy Peter reminisced about when we last interviewed him start to emerge. Suddenly I wanted to play all those games I grew up on again, but we had to know how he thinks the Wii is going to change the future of gaming. Vlad Cole and I somehow managed to pull ourselves together long enough to ask him about whether the sedentary gaming world is ready for full-body frenetic gameplay, how he's influencing the next generation of Nintendo games and game designers, the media agendas of the 360 and PlayStation 3, and even a little on HD gaming.

So, thank you very much for meeting with us, I really appreciate it. The Wii represents a major step forward for Nintendo in terms of functionality and capabilities. One of the things we're really curious to know is what Wii is going to enable you as a game maker to create that you've never been able to create before.

Well, I think the greatest strength of the Wii is that it allows you to create games that are very intuitive and very easy to pick up and play, such that people who've never played a video game before can easily pick up the controller and start playing. And that's kind of the concept behind the games like Tennis and Golf and Baseball and the Wii Sports Series, and these are really kind of the very basic games that we're looking at doing.

And then of course thinking about the types of games that the gamers have come to know and play over the years, the unique features of the Wii controller, such as the direct pointing device on the Wii Remote will allow gamers to now more directly interact with the types of game screens that they've seen, where they're pointing directly at a place on screen to interact with it.

Is there a type of game that even now you still can't or for whatever reason create?

I can't think of any off the top of my head. I don't really have any ideas that stew in my brain for long periods of time. I really just focus on what I'm working on at the moment.

The one thing that I have been thinking about for a long time is this problem we've had with 3D games, where as we've been making 3D games, 3D worlds and the control schemes have becomes so complicated. People who don't play games can't easily jump into those interactive worlds and experience them. And I think we've been able to overcome some of that difficulty with the functionality of the Wii controller. So now as we go forward and create software I have to continue to think of ideas of how to take advantage of that to overcome that barrier.

We knew we should have taken that call from Miyamoto the other day, but our loss was TIME magazine's gain, because the Mario and Zelda creator was looking for someone to, wouldn't you know it, take the upcoming Wii for a little spin. TIME's five page article is so full of interesting deets that we barely have room to scratch the surface here, but suffice it to say that Lev Grossman not only reports on his hands-on experiences with a number of games, he's also able to get inside Nintendo's head, if you will, and tease out a bit of the methodology behind what some hardcore gamers perceive as the company's madness (Wii? those controllers? Nintendogs?). As for the actual gaming, Grossman got to play some tennis (the sensors even allow you to add spin), slay some dragons (brandishing the controller like a sword in Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess), and bring those wacky Warioware minigames into the third dimension (think: fishing, weight lifting, cooking, etc.). Geez, this thing sounds like so much fun that we may just skip the Sony keynote this afternoon and see if the folks from Nintendo will let us play with their goodies.