Despite the slow-building (yet guaranteed) success of Nintendo's 3DS handheld, they're remaining fairly low-key on the 3D front when it comes to their forthcoming Nintendo Wii U home console.

Speaking with Mercury News, Nintendo CEO, Satoru Iwata said the console would support 3D TVs, but that it was not a main focus for them moving forward.

"If you are going to connect Wii U with a home TV capable of displaying 3D images, technologically, yes, it is going to be possible, but that's not the area we are focusing on," Iwata told the site.

"When it comes to 3D, we already have the 3DS, and each owner of the Nintendo 3DS is capable of viewing 3D images. However, when it comes to the home console, it depends upon the availability of 3D TV sets at home, which, unfortunately, is not expanding enough," he added. "And rather than pouring a lot of energy into that kind of area, with the Wii U we'd like to focus more on each Wii U owner being able to have an equal opportunity to enjoy it."

It's not surprising though, the GameCube was actually capable of 3D as well, but the display technology, in terms of TV, at the time wasn't up-to-scratch (and no games were made to take advantage of it, either). Moreover, this all appears to be part of a larger strategy to leave the Wii U's capabilities up to third-parties to expand upon - something Nintendo lost a lot of support through with Wii. Recently, comments from Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime suggested the Wii U's online service would be "open" to third-parties to use as they saw fit.

"We’ve seen what our competitors have done, and we’ve acknowledged that we need to do more online," Fils-Aime told Forbes in an interview. "So instead of a situation where a publisher has their own network and wants that to be the predominant platform, and having arguments with platform holders, we’re going to welcome that. We’re going to welcome that from the best and the brightest of the third party publishers.

"We’ve said that the Wii U will have an extremely robust online experience," he added. "There will be other publishers talking about that as well, and from our perspective, we think it’s much more compelling for that information to come from the publishers than to come from us."

It's good to hear Nintendo are at least broaching much of what the hardcore community has been asking for, but we have heard these kinds of promises from them in the past with no real follow-through. And the vagueness of a lot of their responses tells me they don't really know full what they're doing yet, either. There's still a fair bit of time to go before the console is suggested to be releasing (Easter, 2012), but with manufacturing and compelling launch software, maybe not so much time to really make the Wii U a must-have. We really need more information, Nintendo!