In a new interview with the Tech-On section of Japanese newspaper Nikkei Business Publications, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata talked about his ambitions for the Wii and gave an example of how the console could be beneficial to DS owners.

"Let's say your Wii is connected to the Internet in a mode that allows activation on a 24-hour basis. This would allow Nintendo to send monthly promotional demos for the DS, during the night, to the Wii consoles in each household. Users would wake up each morning, find the LED lamp on their Wii flashing, and know that Nintendo has sent them something," Iwata explained. "They would then be able to download the promotional demo from their Wii's to their Nintendo DS's. This will, of course, be possible in gaming stores too, but I think users will enjoy being able to do this within their homes. The key merit here is having promotional material delivered to your home, instead of having to go collect it yourself."

Iwata said that it's his hope that users will turn on their Wii systems every day, and that by offering content over the Internet they'll be enticed to see what's new. "More and more users have concentrated periods of gaming following major releases, and stop playing for months once that is over. I hope the Wii, like the Nintendo DS, will have its power turned on every day," he continued. "To lead users to do that, we need to offer something new each day. That is why we thought of a system that would allow us to change our offerings during the night. I feel that allowing the system to stay connected to the Net throughout the night is a valid application of semiconductor technology."

The Nintendo president also talked a bit about developers creating original games for the Virtual Console on Wii, much like Xbox Live Arcade. "When creating a packaged game to be priced at 5,000 yen, developers tend to feel the need to create a rich game. Yet it is possible to create a reasonably entertaining game in 2 months with a team of three. Offering such games for 500 yen over a network could lead to a reasonable number of people purchasing it. By offering an environment that allows this, we hope to encourage more developers to pursue basic yet enjoyable gameplay," he said. "Of course, content-rich games have their own merit, and I have no intention of discrediting them. Such games are important in their own right, and will continue to be in demand. Still - think about it - eating French cuisine or a full dinner each day would quickly lead to boredom, wouldn't it? You'll want a simple bowl of rice and soup every now and then. Our intention with the Wii is to propose an alternate approach to gaming business, as the gaming industry is currently far too single-minded." [Note: 500 yen is about $4.50]

Interestingly, Iwata also revealed that there may have been some internal discord at Nintendo about going in such a radical direction with their new console. "The current design for game controllers was determined by Nintendo, so some of our staff disagreed with changing it. Yet after some hands-on time with the prototypes, we knew we had a working formula. That is why I declared at last year's E3 that revolutionary interfaces will bring change to future games," he said.

Finally, Iwata talked about what it's like to be a challenger in the competitive video game landscape. It's a curious position for the once dominant Nintendo to be in, but the company hasn't been #1 for the last decade or so. "Nintendo once was the champion in the console market, yet is now the challenger," said Iwata. "Challengers have a hard time getting the market to listen to them. Our intent [with DS] was to revolutionize the user interface in the portable games market, where Nintendo is the reigning champion, and follow that up with the Wii's success in the console market. We have earned support for our user interface innovation much faster than I had expected, and this should help propel the Wii forward."

Check out the full interview here