Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the robot apocalypse.

A new report by Eurogamer claims that the hardware that will eventually replace the current Kinect peripheral (presumably on the next Xbox console) will be so powerful that it can read lips and determine emotions by monitoring facial expressions. Citing unnamed sources, Eurogamer’s Wesley Yin-Poole says that the new hardware will feature higher resolution capture and a beefier chipset.

“It can be cabled straight through on any number of technologies that just take phenomenally high res data straight to the main processor and straight to the main RAM and ask, what do you want to do with it?” our source said.

I for one would like to welcome our new robot masters.

When Nintendo releases its next console it’ll almost assuredly have motion-control support.

Speaking with Popular Mechanics, Shigeru Miyamoto, the creative force behind many Nintendo games, said motion control will likely return in the Wii 2, and teased a lower price-point and physical size of the controllers.

“With both the Wii remote itself and Wii Motion Plus, what we’ve been able to do is introduce an interface that is both I think appealing and at the right price for a broad audience,” said Miyamoto. “And while we don’t have any concrete plans for what we’ll be doing with hardware in the future, what I can say is that, my guess is that because we found this interface to be so interesting, I think it would be likely that we would try to make that same functionality perhaps more compact and perhaps even more cost-efficient.”

Miyamoto also spoke about the lack of HD graphics on the current Wii system and if the next console would feature greater graphical fidelity.

“What I don’t think is particularly true is that the graphics make the game,” he said. “We’re still going to focus on the gameplay. We’ll take advantage of the technology as it comes out, but right now, this is what we offer.”

Nintendo started the motion-control gaming revolution with the Wii, so it would make sense that they’d continue that effort in the next version, but, and it’s a huge but, this is Nintendo we’re talking about, so your guess, or the guess of my ten-year-old sister, is just as valid.

What do you want in a “Wii 2″?

Source: IGN