Nintendo are certainly developing a next generation console at the moment and they are sure to be paying particular attention to the interfaces brought forward by Microsoft and Sony. So without paying any extra money for development or testing they get to see two alternative implementations being tested and brought to market. So instead of designing and releasing Wiimote 2.0 they can instead release Wiimote 2.5 when they finally release a next generation console.

Making an interface is harder than making a console which performs at a decent price. For performance there are many off the shelf solutions available and the pain has already been borne by developers and publishers to create an effective toolset for the creation of high definition assets. However the interface is another thing entirely and the onus on this is entirely on them to get right and to improve upon both the lessons of the Wii and the lessons learnt from Sony and Microsofts copy-cat attempts.

Nintendo needs not to worry. All they need to worry about is the amount of games and the quality of games coming to the Wii and they are golden.

Sony and Microsoft are the ones playing catch up and are not offering anything Nintendo has hasn't thought about. If Nintendo has already checked out these options and opted to do what they are doing now, they pretty much got the upperhand here...

Nintendo already addressed Natal saying that they did testing on a similar concept and found that hands free just wasn't what people wanted. Who knows though, MS have a way of making things popular. As far as Nintendo is concerned though, they already have the M+ and I just don't see how they care enough to even pay attention to the Arc. The 'mote is good for what it is. Easily produced, cheap, and popular. I'm quite confident that Nintendo had the M+ just laying around until the competition decided to enter the motion market. Now they will just focus on other peripherals, like the vitality sensor.

I would wager that third parties have spent so much time and effort poisoning the well on motion control, that they will trot out nothing but token efforts using the Arc and Natal. Ergo, Nintendo will find absolutely nothing of value to learn from their work.

Anything that might force Nintendo's hand to further innovation is welcome.

Sony apparantly tested a Wiimote concept before the generation began and decided against it. Not every company can see the full potential or even realise the full potential of a technology. For Sony Arc makes sense because it fits into their engineering expertise and already designed systems with the Eyetoy etc, the Wiimote makes sense because its simple and very effective whereas for Microsoft Natal makes the most sense because its a purely software based system. Each company has particular strengths and weaknesses so even if Nintendo tested a camera like system it doesn't mean that the interface could have been made to work as effectively by them as Microsoft.

Im talking about the Wiimote 2.0 here, a next generation console taking advantage of potential lessons from Nintendos competitors. Since Nintendo cannot prototype and field test 3 different interfaces it will give them a good idea how to tweak their next generation concept to take into account the good lessons from the early concepts.

Yeah, I meant to convey that idea, but you did a lot better lol. "MS has a way of making things popular" It could turn out to be huge, but I don't really think Nintendo is worried because even so, their strategy is to market to a new audience when confronted by pressure.

Nintendo has to learn other things from its competitors but not much how to a make perifericals considering the Wii success.
Still I think that eventually some good idea will come out of nadal, don't know if Nintendo will consider them.... they usually do things their own way(either in good or in a bad way).

i think it will be good

it makes sure that Nintendo is on top of its toes (well hopefully anyway)

Isn't Arc a wii like controller? What can you learn from that? Also Natal won't work well as a standered controller. I think nintendo already knows what to do next generation. Though they could learn from mistakes of their competors