More Hints at Nintendo's Revolution

The Nintendo press conference touched on aspects of the Nintendo Revolution, but offered no details on what "the" revolution is. No word on the controllers or when the console will be released. One new tantilizing aspect of the console was announced, though: "The console also will have downloadable access to 20 years of fan-favorite titles originally released for Nintendo® 64, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System® (SNES) and even the Nintendo Entertainment System® (NES)." No word on pricing, of course, but exciting nonetheless.

Comments

No hints, here's the console...

[NightWulf]

Pictures of the console
http://media.cube.ign.com/articles/615/615030/imgs _1.html

Pictures of the Zelda trailer
http://cube.ign.com/articles/615/615045p1.html

Re:Wonderings

[SetupWeasel]

Super Mario Sunshine was a specific example of a game that could be downloaded.

Re:Hobbiest Development???

[|/|/|||]

The Zelda game is for GC, not next-gen.

Re:Maybe I'm missing something

[Bagels]

Sure it could. 512MB would store 8 of the largest possible N64 games (at 64MB) uncompressed. As I recall it, only Resident Evil 2 and Conker's BFD were ever that large. Thus, you're guaranteed space for over 8 games. The two Zeldas clocked in at 32MB, and Ogre Battle 64 was 40MB. With compression, I'd guess that the average size of a game would be somewhere around 20MB (not that Nintendo made lots of 20MB carts, that's just where I'd expect the balance to fall, considering the number of 16MB and 32MB carts). SNES games range from 1 to 4MB; you could literally fit hundred(s) of them in that space. NES games? Quite possibly a thousand of those.

Re:Play Those Old NES Games ONLINE =)

[PhoenixFlare]

If Nintendo could make it so that any of those old multiplayer Nintendo games could be played against another person online instead of having him or her right next to you..... that would be the ultimate killer scenario. Is it possible? I don't know. A guy should be allowed to speculate, though.

You've been able to do this with emulators like ZSNES and Snes9x for years now, so i'd say it's at least possible, if they wanted to do it.

Re:Can the software library offset hardware specs?

[barawn]

After Sony and Microsoft making a huge deal of the processing power of their hardware, the rumors that Revolution will only be 2 - 3 times more powerful then the Gamecube (as opposed to 15 or so times more powerful for PS3 vs PS2)is somewhat troubling.

That's because Sony and Microsoft both live in la-la land when it comes to actually marketing for games. The only reason they survive is because A) Sony is still riding the crest of the original PlayStation, and B) Microsoft has enough money to entice 3rd party developers, and has a good online model.

If Nintendo had the same 3rd party support that Microsoft and Sony did, they'd be dominating the market. Seriously. They're far, far better at marketing games.

The Xbox 360 will not be "10 times more powerful" than the original Xbox. No way. Maybe in some situations (see Apple's RDF: "10X faster in Photoshop. With this filter. On this size file. On Tuesdays.") but certainly not in general. Ditto with the PS3.

Anyway, let me explain the original comment: what do you know about the PS3?

To quote Ars Technica:

* Backwards compatibility with the Playstation and Playstation 2
* Support for Blu-Ray, DVD, CD-ROM, CDRW, DVD-ROM, DVD+R, and DVD-R formats.
* Storage options include a 2.5-inch removable hard drive, SD, Memory Stick Duo, and compact flash.
* Connectivity options include Bluetooth (for the controllers), 802.11b (for PSP connectivity), Gigabit Ethernet, and USB 2.0
* The Cell processor will run at 3.2GHz (same as the Xbox's 360's Xenon CPU)
* Main memory is 256MB of RDRAM, and the machine will also have 256MB of 700MHz GDDR VRAM. (Compare the Xbox 360's single pool of 512MB of GDDR 3 DRAM.)
* Video output can go as high as 1080p

But there is not a single word in there about what kind of games it will play. They showed a few tech demos, and a few sequels to current games. All of that gets basically lost in their marketing shuffle. Besides, while people may deride Nintendo for reusing old games, Sony is definitely rapidly running up there. Tekken 6? Gran Turismo 5? These properties are two generations old! Zelda is five generations old and only has 6 console games entirely.

In contrast, Nintendo's presentation was all about the games, and the way the next console will work. Just listen to what everyone's saying: "oh, playing that will be cool!" "oh, doing that will be cool!" even though Nintendo hasn't even announced one game for it.

Until we know exactly what the hardware specs for Revolution are, being worried about the console being underpowerered are premature.

Wait till the games come out, and decide for yourself. Hardware specs can be massively deceiving, as Sony and Microsoft traded the MHz myth for the "peak FLOPs" myth. Nintendo's not stupid. Their consoles are always extremely well designed from an architecture point of view. Sony and Microsoft, on the other hand, both tend to be a little sloppy and wasteful (*still* with a UMA for Xbox 360? bleah. At least it's got 10MB of eDRAM, but what a way to stall 6 threads at once by starving them of memory bandwidth by making the graphics processor steal it).

Nintendo E3 Video Torrent

[josath]

http://rorexrobots.com/nin/Nintendo-E3.asf.torrent
nice fast 10mbit seed with nobody currently on it...get it while it's hot!