"Of course within Nintendo we've been giving a lot of thought to this and connectivity itself is something that we've been working on for many years," Miyamoto said, pointing out that the company played around with this idea using the GameCube and Gameboy Advance.

"The problem then of course [with the GameCube] was that you had some people who might have both systems, but many people didn't," he said. "So the connectivity features were something that couldn't be enjoyed by all players. That was really our drive and focus with creating Wii U and the Gamepad. It was enabling that second screen to be something that was a part of the system itself, so that people were able to have the full experience there. Separate from how the GamePad and Wii U are leveraging some of those connectivity ideas, we're also exploring how Nintendo 3DS can connect to Wii U and different ways that we have data exchanges between those two.

"So while we don't currently have anything that we can talk about officially that's going to leverage cross-play with a single title, we are looking at different ways to leverage the 3DS connection with the Wii U; how we can share that data and how we can allow people to take advantage of those sorts of connectivity features."

One of the big issues all game consoles struggle with today is that they compete against electronics that deliver bite-sized gaming on easy-to-purchase platforms. Buying a game on a smartphone requires tapping the device's screen. Downloads of these micro-games are often almost instantaneous. Sony promises to tackle that issue on their PlayStation 4 with a smart store that looks at a gamer's buying habits and pre-loads software it thinks the gamer might like onto the console ahead of time. I asked Miyamoto if Nintendo was looking at anything similar for the 3DS or Wii U, both consoles that support game downloads, but that are anchored by slow download speeds.

"There's nothing I could really say from a Nintendo standpoint," he said. "We do have features like SpotPass that does allow for data to be delivered overnight while you're sleeping and things like that and again this isn't necessarily what Nintendo's doing, but technologically speaking the technology exists. For example, if somebody were to be able to access a shop from a cell phone and make a purchase from a cell phone and then maybe have that content be downloaded to your system, that type of a technological structure already exists. So there's certainly the possibility that we could look to explore that area further, but it's not anything that we're prepared to announce or really talk about at this point."

The company is also revisiting the notion of episodic games, something Miyamoto said he is interested in. Miyamoto pointed out, when I asked him about his thoughts on The Walking Dead delivered to gamers one episode at a time, that Nintendo experimented with episodic gaming back in 2001 with The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages.

"When we first released The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of the Ages and Oracle of Seasons on GameBoy Color many years ago, the original idea for those games was for them to be more episodic in content and the development actually started with the notion of potentially trying to sell dungeons individually," he said. "At the time that we were working on the Oracle games, we felt that it just wasn't right to deliver the game in that fashion. But when we look at, for example, what we've done with the eShop and the possibilities that lie there and particularly with the fact that we're able to patch now existing games that have already been released, that then opens up the possibility for downloadable content or adding new levels to a game that's already been released."

The best example of that, he added, is the pending release of New Super Luigi U, downloadable content for New Super Mario Bros. U that will change the more than 80 courses in the game into entirely new levels.

"So certainly we're seeing the way that this is already changing things and it's definitely an area that we're still looking at and we'll continue to look at," he said. "From where the technology is and the eShop has developed to at this point, we do have the ability to sell as a package game or only as a digital game, we have the ability to sell in increments or different installments so we can explore those different functions."

Miyamoto's Luigi shirt wasn't the only thing Luigi in the room when we spoke. Miyamoto also had two Luigi hats sitting nearby on the table. All of this Luigi wasn't purely circumstance. Earlier this year Nintendo declared 2013 the year of Luigi, pinned to the release of Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon and the New Super Luigi U add-on content. But why Luigi? With so many characters to choose from, what made Miyamoto and the others at Nintendo decide Mario's brother needed a year?