April 12^th, 2004 (12:00am) - GameSpy has published an interview between veteran industry writer Steven Kent and Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo Co. Ltd. Iwata-san discusses Nintendo’s hardware design philosophy, expectations for the next generation, the possibility of a GameCube/GBA portable hybrid, and much more.

The young executive spends much of the interview reiterating past statements regarding the unimportance of increasing technical specifications in the new systems.

...if the next generation of consoles only represents beefed-up technology, there will not be much of a future.

Iwata also talks about Nintendo’s next console, giving it a tentative name for the first time:

The abilities of GCNext will be different from what you have seen from consoles in the past. What Nintendo is currently discussing is not about state-of-the-art technology for enhancing processing power. But what I, Miyamoto, and Mr. Takeda [engineering leader Genyo Takeda] are discussing is what should be done to entertain people in a new way; and in order to achieve this, what functionality must be added to our current technology.

It’s slated for a stateside launch date of Decemeber 31, 2006

http://www.gamespy.com/articles/505/505234p1.html?fromint=1