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Time With The Revolution
IGN managed to get their hands on a Revolution Developer's Kit, and have put up a tantalizing hands-on impressions article. Folks who are very much looking forward to Nintendo's entrance into the next-gen war may find things of interest here. From the article: "One thing is crystal clear from the controller-based development kits, though: Revolution will definitely operate as an extension of the GameCube hardware. These preliminary kits include only a wired Revolution controller, a wired nunchuck attachment and a wired motion bar, which some studios have labeled the 'wand.' So the obvious question is, how can developers possibly hope to test any of this gear out? The answer is simple: the controller and its attachments plug into existing GameCube development hardware."
Just because Nintendo made a low-cost controller dev kit by interfacing their new controller technology to their existing hardware doesn't mean that you can infer that the Revolution will be built on Gamecube hardware. All you can infer is that Nintendo has possibly made their prototype Revolution controller a derivative so that current Gamecube developers can explore the new controller paradigm without having to either buy, or wait, for the new Revolution dev kits.
The Nintendo GC disk format is basically MiniDVD with a few tweaks and a larger inner circle (so it starts a little further in and ordinary drives can't find start of disc). The Revolution format is going to be DVD sized, exactly the same format.
"IGN managed to get their hands on a Revolution Developer's Kit, and have put up a tantalizing hands-on impressions article."
no...they go their hands on a Controller Kit, not a Developer's Kit. This kit was basically just to let developers know what kind of controller they'd be using when developing for the Revolution. That way they can start brainstorming now about possible titles that can utilize the controller while working with hardware they're already familiar with...
Nintendo made the controller available to game studios so they could start thinking about how to use it to develop games. Given that the controller is (by far) the most important change in Revolution, it's also the most important thing for studios to come to grips with.
"Oh, and it's also five times as powerful as the GameCube" is also important, but not necessarily something that studios need to experience firsthand at this particular stage of the game. That will come when the hardware is ready. At this point Nintendo is (quite sensibly) concentrating on getting the controller right, because if that doesn't fly, the whole concept is shot.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
The dev kits they saw were old. According to Reggie Fils-Aime (Nintendo VP of Sales) there have been 3 different revisions of the Rev dev kit so far. They are:
1) A GameCube console with a wired Revolution controller attached
2) Similar to the above, but with a few minor tweaks, and boosted CPU power
3) Wireless controllers, more complete hardware
A fourth dev kit is expected soon that will be 90-95% of the finished product. So whatever they saw, if it had wired controllers, it's already out of date.