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Nintendo Revolution Details Emerge
Pyrohazard writes "Nintendo has posted some details on the Revolution to their official site, finally giving us some insight into what the console will be like. From the site: 'It will be about the thickness of three standard DVD cases and only slightly longer.' This makes it the smallest Nintendo console yet! It will also be able to stand up, similar to the PS2, and the Xbox 360. It will be backwards compatible, and it will also play '12cm optical disks in the same self-loading media drive'. It also states that it will have a very quick start-up time, and be very quiet. It finishes by stating 'Get ready for the Nintendo Revolution in 2006!'" C|Net has an article up arguing that Nintendo is making an error in missing the 2005 Holiday season.
Check out this fan made video. It's really well done.
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Article about video
I do agree with the cnet artical that nintendo are going to miss a major sale period here if it is not out till 2006 but they may as of yet pull it forward .
,Which is a very good thing as we don't need another loud large monster console.
.Though let me put my pundit hat on , besides the normal conectivity ala the GBA and the gamecube i suspect the reveloution may have the ability to download the data from the cards and allow you to play GBA or DS games on the big screen using the DS as a wireless controler (with the touch pad screen perhaps still working as normal ) and perhaps multi player DS games can be played with Reveloution controlers for some titles which dont have a touch screen (unless nintendo take a leaf out of the dreamcasts book and include a screen on the controler , albeit with touch pad functionality. ;) so dont cite me on it.
Looks like they are taking a leaf out of the mac minis book with the form factor
Its wonderfull they have confrimed backwards compatability which will be very important in giving them a good start with a cataloug of games though they may be missing out here if they don't include some form of DVD playback.
I have argued a few times that its not the features that sell a console but the games , but all things being equal otherwise the features can make or break the sale.
I am awaiting news of the conectivity with the DS , this is pure idle speculation
That is pure idle speculation though
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I think it could be a smart move. Think of it. The XBox and the PS3 will be going all out to steal each others' thunder, and the consumer market for consoles will be split. If Nintendo can handle staying out of the spotlight for a little while, and then show up the next year with a console superior to the other two and good lineup of games, all the attention will be focused on them. As it is, you could argue it's too early for a second XBox and a third Playstation. Nintendo's timing could be perfect.
It's interesting that all 3 console manufacturers chose IBM PPC processors this time around. It means that game developers programming in assembly language will only have to learn one. Too bad there aren't many left who do. (A fact of life when the bottlenecks move to memory/art/game-logic).
Because the GameCube used PPC, it looks like Nintendo will be the only one with an (relatively) easy backwards compatability story. The PS2 could perhaps be emulated since it was only a 300Mhz MIPS processor, but I pity the person that has to write the emulator for the pipelining stages on the VUs. Microsoft has not said whether they'll be backwards compatible, but I predict the answer is no.
Didn't Nintendo's president say in a press conference just a few months ago that the Revolution will actually have some feature that is "Revolutionary" that no one has seen before and will change console gaming forever? I remember a slashdot article about it but I cannot find a link to the specific "story" I'm thinking about.
:)
Perhaps something about the controller?
Or perhaps some obscure feature that we'll hafta wait longer to see?
I was hoping to see something about that in this article but I guess I will hafta wait longer... If anyone has a link to what I think I'm talking about, I'd appreciate it.
"This is Zombo Com, and welcome to you who have come to Zombo Com" - www.zombo.com
"(Update 05/13/05) I have had a couple of readers that commented on Microsoft stating that the Xbox 360 was "water cooled." While this might be technically true, it carries a very heavy marketing spin in order to glom onto an enthusiast technology. To be succinct, the Xbox 360 is not water cooled in the way we, meaning just about every computer hardware enthusiast on the planet, tend to think of water cooling. The Xbox 360 motherboard we were shown did have a CPU heatsink in place that utilized a heatpipe. Yes, a heatpipe does have liquid in it and some H2O as well, but is usually primarily ammonia. In a heatpipe, the liquid at the "hot" end vaporizes, and is moved to the "cold" end of the heatpipe by a pressure differential and convection. Once the heat is transferred to the fins in the cold end, the substance condenses and the process repeats. The CPU cooler we saw on the Xbox 360 processor looked very much like this CPU cooler seen at Plycon except the Xbox 360 cooler was taller than wider and only utilized one copper heatpipe tube."
Link -> http://www.hardocp.com/articleprint.html?article_i d=768
I don't think that the addition of a DVD player would add much. When the PS2 was released, not everyone had a DVD player. Now, almost everyone has a DVD player, and if they don't, they're extremely affordable.
I'd argue that Nintendo might be better served waiting until *after* the Christmas season. There's been several "OMG I must have!" Christmas toys that nobody can find, everybody's going onto Ebay and bidding hundreds of dollars for.
You see, not being able to get it makes people want it more. It's fairly standard marketing practice to actually artificially make your product more scarce, because it makes people want it more.
Many of those fad Christmas gifts were hard to find... because it was all planned that way by the people making them. Intentionally making shipments erratic, etc. There's no reason why they couldn't flood the market with the product... but then nobody would want it as badly. Of course once the Christmas season they give up on the charade and just ship them normally.
Remember when Gmail was "invite-only" and everyone that you know couldn't get an invite fast enough? Again, articially-induced scarcity.
Nintendo is losing big by missing Christmas, a time when demand is typically quintupled. They would miss it only if they had no other choice.
It is good to maintain backward compatibility, Nintendo will have an easier time getting people that own a GameCube to buy their new console - just as Sony had an easier time getting people who owned the Playstation to buy the Playstation 2. This will give them an easier time with launching this new system.
Not only that, but as the new console generation pops up starting this Christmas, people will take into account which system has the most enjoyable games - if Xbox 360 doesn't have a solid number of good games at release time and isn't able to play Xbox games, they may find people holding back to get a Playstation 3s or Revolutions because of the already present game catalog.
I'm rooting for Nintendo, they've had some extremely fun games on the GameCube with a massively higher ratio of good games to bad when put alongside the Xbox or Playstation 2. The Mario sports games have all been excellent and enjoyable, rather than a pretty simulation of the sport like the EA and Sega sports titles carried by the competition.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
OTOH, water cooling is a relatively expensive option. If, as in the previous XBox, Microsoft sells XBox360 below cost, that's another $5 or $10 per unit (times millions) it'll cost them for something of questionable marketing value.
If any of the big 3 does actually get into the shops this year, it will be a miracle, but even if they do rush some samples out the door in order to win the marketing race, they certainly won't have the volume to fulfill the Christmas season demand in all territories, let alone a decent games line-up.
All the new machines will arrive in British shops mid 2006, at high prices, and a round of price cuts will happen in the lead-up to Christmas, when games start appearing in volume.
2005's Christmas console race is already decided. The PSP will be in the shops with a lot of games. Any next-gen machine won't have the manufacturing volume or the games line-up to compete.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I guess the big N are counting on this console once again appealing to hardcore gameplayers, especially since you can't watch DVDs on this.
Uh, EVERYONE has a dvd player now, who cares. Nobody bought an xbox for watching DVD's (not to mention the required 50$ remote) I don't know a single non-gamer (the majority of my friends) who watches dvd's on their xbox or ps2.
Not to mention, adding this drives up the price and drives up the complexity, which drives down the quality (I'm not saying the DVD funtionality is what causes xbox and ps2 drives to break so often, but complexity always makes things less stable)
You don't have a DVD drive already? Their 40$ you cheap basterd, my dvd player was cheaper than the xbox dvd remote. Everyone has a dvd player, and nobody bought a xbox to play dvd movies. Nobody. I heard japanesse people bought the ps2 as a dvd player because it was cheaper at the time, but it wont be this time. The reason some developers didnt like the cartridge format is because n64 carts were like 8mb, and a cd is 700. Square likes cutscenes, which wouldn't fit on a cart. The Revolution uses 12cm discs, and theyre blu-ray discs if I recall. They will have equal, or near equal (possibly higher?) capacity then the xbox (still uses standard DVD's) and who knows for the PS3. Also, 99.99% of games dont use the full DVD disc anyway, so the gamecubes smaller (2GB?) discs weren't much of an issue. As I said before, the Revolution uses 12cm disks, with a higher capacity. Think before you post.
So Nintendo is making a big mistake not releasing their console this year, and Sony don't get mentioned even though their console is slated for 2006 too?
True Sony have made noises about releasing the PS3 this year, but they did exactly the same thing to spoil the Dreamcast's launch. And even though they were about a year after the DC, Sony still had crappy release titles.
I think you will find that despite the smaller form factor with the Nintendo Revolution, it will probably still be on par with the PS3 and Xbox 360 given the extra time they will have in producing it. I will be amazed if even the PS3 is as large as the Xbox 360. Additionally, I beleive that the addition of multiple numbers of CPUs, all running at different Mgz clouds the overall power of the system, and makes a systems speed difference very negligable. I think this holiday season is the least of Nintendo's concerns. Nintendo has already stated that they are going after Sony as the top dog in the race. Stepping onto the market later is actually a good move and I think the Xbox 360 is coming to the market way too early. We have seen this happen with the Sega Saturn and the Sega Dreamcast. I also am strangely getting the notion that Microsoft is aiming its targets at Nintendo, and Nintendo is aiming theirs at Sony. And Sony is just content to be at the top. Why not try to challenge Sony? In the end, it is very possible there will be 2 leaders this time around, Sony and Nintendo.
It's already been exposed on a Brazilian site as a fraud, along with high-res caps of the Mario models they used in the video.
I'd say that's more a problem with how we raise kids. Come on, do you really think kids should have the mentality that:
1) They need to grow up as fast as possible and
2) That being mature means you get to kill shit with blood and gore?
Between me and my roommate we have all three major consoles and the system we use the least is the xbox. In fact he's not even planning on bringing that thing back next year, he's spent more time playing my gamecube than his own xbox and we are in the age group that kids are seemingly obsessed with becoming.
I knew the moment the xbox came out with it's potato-feeling controller, central unit that couldn't sit flat in some store's display cases, and collection of like two interesting platform specific games (neither of which interest me in particular) that I would never buy one.
Between my PS2 and my CG, when I want to play 5 minutes before I go out or whatnot, the PS2 isn't even worth tunring on. The load times for most games are enormous.
.. God of War got it right, but in general, there is WAY too much load time in PS2 games.
.. select, confirm, dismiss dialog. I just want game.
Things should always load in the background
But it seems like years ago that I played the game Metroid Prime, and it was absolutely incredible in terms of pre-emptive loading.
It still bugs the shit out of me that most games make you prompt 2 or 3 times to write to a flash card
Sony and MS are still exploring whether the games console is the best way to introduce the executive-wet-dream they like to call 'converage'. One device, for everything you need. One vendor. Total market share across horizontal markets such as TV, movies, music and games. I like the fact that Nintendo doesn't give a god damn what their machines do except let you play fun games non-stop.
"Old man yells at systemd"
that Nintendo partnered with IGN.
The landscape for Nintendo information is going to get very strange. First you worry that IGN and GameSpy will be too positive about Nintendo. Then you think that Gamespot and C|Net are going to get vindictive.
Why couldn't Nintendo buy everyone off like Sony and Microsoft do?
This video has been making the rounds, it's a confirmed fake made by a college graphic artists, he hid "HIRE ME" and his email address inside the video on a few frames.
Right now, I've got a DVD player and a Gamecube. I've also got a receiver to amplify sound b/c the sound on my TV absolutely sucks (but that's another story). I've got to use a KVM switch (dunno what they're called to switch between DVD and gamecube, but you get the idea) to manually switch between the two systems when I want to go from one to the other.
Also, when my current DVD player breaks down, I can pay a bit (???) more and get a Revolution. In other words, I'm saving about $100 off the purchase price. There is absolutely no downside that I can see, especially since mini-DVDs can currently be used in conjunction with a mod chip to play burned Gamecube games right now anyway (so risk of piracy is the same).
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
What does it matter if it's MS's first console rollout? You do realize that GameCube was Nintendo's first optical disc platform, right? They had as much history with optical drives/discs and Xbox and they seemed to have created of the 3, by far the most stable and reliable hardware.
I stole this
Or my Dreamcast... and frankly the start-up time of the 'cube is not all that it could be.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Just heard this from over at the teamxbox forums (ironically)
"Each player will actually have two controllers, one for each hand. They will each have a joystick or d-pad, a regular shoulder button, and a pressure sensitive trigger, kinda like the gamecube. But he said the real kicker is that they also have laser readers of some sort in the top of the controller, above the triggers that can tell where you are pointing. So for instance if you were playing a FPS, you'd point it up and you'd look up, move it right and you'd look right."
With these consoles coming out with HD support, fast multi-core CPU's (PPC), I'm wondering if Intel and AMD are worried that they might loose market shared to the consoles especially if they supported web, IM and email through optional keyboards/mice.
Will Apple receive a 3+ Ghz multicore processor soon from Apple?
Will this lead to more games being ported to the Mac "first"?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
It says fan mockup but it looks pretty professional.. If this is real the new Nintendo it looks interesting
p e=wmv Video
http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=5779&ty
A DVD is 12cm in diameter. The article clearly stated that the Revolution would use a 12cm diameter disc.
... to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if the XBox360 is the Saturn or Dreamcast (hmm, both of those were next generation consoles released around a year earlier than the consoles that eventually killed them in the market), although any gaming HDTV owner will have to get one. At least it doesn't look ugly this time around.
As it is coming out in 2006, I expect that it will either be a Bluray variant, or a HD-DVD variant. I'm hoping it will be a HD-DVD variant. Why? Because I can buy a Revolution for the fun multiplayer games and Nintendo franchise games, and get a free HD-DVD player, and then I can buy a PS3 for the more serious action games, and get a free Bluray player! Either that, or it will be a standard DVD-a-like to cut costs.
The XBox360 is the loser here, everyone has a DVD player already. Maybe if it supported DVD Audio, and the console was silent to boot
Well, if your goal is feeling like you're on the winning side of a pissing contest between Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, then certainly the added popularity garnered by tossing in a DVD player is a huge asset.
On the other hand, if your goal in buying a Nintendo system is to play it and enjoy it for the toy that it is, then a DVD player only makes your toy more expensive.
Nintendo's not overly concerned with being number one - they want to make good games, and they're turning enough of a profit to allow them to continue to focus on innovation and gameplay - something that gamers should appreciate, whether you enjoy their stuff or not.
Your brain is not a computer.
meh... gta:sa is at the EOL of a platform. you expect them to stretch resources, and one of hte tradeoffs is long load time.
however, i *love* that gta:sa has no loading whilst driving. frickin sweet.
... hi bingo
There's a fourth wildcard: Samsung.
:)
I have long expected Samsung to jump in with MS for the Xbox program if not buy out MS's share. The MTV special was LOADED with Samsung ads. The two companies are apparently already living together.
Why? Microsoft wants to beat PS3 and Samsung just wants Sony dead. Worse for Sony, Samsung is on a tear and actually has the products to do it, in vertical markets both dominated by Sony and in markets Sony can't touch. What crumbs Samsung leaves behind, LG is happy to grab. Sony is under huge pressure they simply have not felt in years.
For MS, Samsung brings the manufacturing skills that would come in handy for making consoles.
Right now, making Sony miserable is Samsung job #1 and if they can throw a few billion at videogames and give Sony a massive headache, they'll do it. In a flash.
So I speculate they will either go in with MS as coproducers on Xbox360 or the third Xbox will be made by Samsung and powered by MS.
If it happens, I was scoop credit.
Sig for hire.