Nintendo's Hideki Konno divulges some titillating info on the 3DS, including motion-capabilities and downloadable software...

Nintendo's Hideki Konno is one of the chief architects of the company's upcoming 3DS, so don't be surprised if you hear quite a bit from him in the upcoming months. Speaking to Wired, the man who also gave us Mario Kart and Luigi's Mansion spoke at length about several of the features the new system will offer.

Firstly, and perhaps most interestingly, comes revelations that Nintendo were working on 3D experiments as far back as last millennium, with prototypes to offer 3D suppor to such games as Luigi's Mansion.

"We have been doing these experiments for a very long time, starting from the NES era. We also tried with the Virtual Boy. And even for GameCube, with the development of Luigi's Mansion, we were thinking of developing a 3-D version of it. However, at that time it was very difficult to realize it as an actual product on the market, because of the resolution of the screen and the separate costs of the console and screen.

"We have been waiting, going to tech shows and seeing the latest 3-D technology and devices that support those features. We started to have more confidence that this might be a good time to bring 3-D back to Nintendo."

Also discussed was the device's 'Tag Mode' - a unique feature which allows users to swap game data regardless of what game they're currently playing. Konno-san elaborated on how the feature would work:

"In the hardware, we have the capability that when you first play a game that supports Tag Mode, it will save to a Tag Mode data slot in the hardware system. We are planning to support multiple games at the same time: Mario Kart, Nintendogs, Animal Crossing, etc... We'll prepare a Tag Mode Viewer, where if you look at the viewer you'll be able to see that, for example you were able to connect with 50 people in Nintendogs and got their data, or got 100 people in Animal Crossing.

On the subject of a downloadable service in the same vein as WiiWare and DSiWare, Konno wasn't prepared to make a confirmation, but he did say "like WiiWare and DSiWare there should be downloadable content for this platform."

One titbit that will sure to please fans of motion control, when Konno was quizzed on whether the capabilities of the 3DS' accelerometer could match up to Wii's MotionPlus, the answer was a clear "Yes, the same type of motion sensing is possible."

Finally onto ergonomics, it was confirmed that Nintendo could enlarge the 3D screen on the system without harming the visual effect, opening up the possibility of a 3DS XL down the line. Konno-san also stated that we could take the exterior design of the console we saw at E3 as final.

3DS is primed to launch sometime before March 2011. Are you hyped?