Firstly, the DIEC conference bore hardly anything new. Avid readers of my blog knew this in advance, because one of the organizers posted here and said so. Also, Nintendo was not likely to reveal big news at an academic conference without any media coverage. Summing up, Miyamoto confirmed another secret concerning the Revolution. Again, no news to regular readers of this blog. Both Valve´s Robin Walker and Atari-founder Bushnell expressed admiration for Nintendo´s next-gen plans. Yet no Mario128 and no surprise announcement by Kojima-San.
Source: Kotaku
Thanks to: Various
Secondly, there was the rather ridiculous rumour about the following being a possible Rev screen, originating from Poland.
Now, the screenshot is taken from the game´s site Raid over the River. Administrative contact is one Lukasz Bando from Krakow, Poland. The site is registered to a company called I-net. Notice how there is no development company mentioned. Only the name ´Nibris´ appears in copyright notices. The story is that these people developed ´Raid over the River´ as a PC game and subsequently applied to Nintendo in order to be able to develop it on Revolution. They were turned down. They have thus not had access to any Nintendo development kits. The design document on the webpage is given as version 0.90 and is dated Monday, 25 October 2004. Why anyone would think the screenshots have anything to do with the Revolution is beyond me. It´s a PC game and no more.
Source: Revolution Report
Thanks to: Go Nintendo
Thirdly, there are a number of new Revolution pages. There is a new site on the Nintendo of Europe server. And, low and behold, IGN Revolution is finally up. About time, too.
Sources: Nintendo of Europe Revolution site, IGN Revolution
Thanks to: Savior of Hyrule
Fourthly, IGN has a some news on the Revolution´s power. Here´s the executive summary:
"To be honest, it's not much more powerful than an Xbox. It's like a souped up Xbox," a major third party source revealed to us. "But it's the controller that makes the difference and the controller is really nice." (...)Not much here, either. I, for one, maintain that a new method of viewing games makes for (and will more than make up for) the lack of horsepower.
Revolution will not have the RAM capacity to store and display an abundant source of high-definition textures. Third parties have revealed to us that the console will top out with 128MBs of RAM, and possibly even less. One studio would not give us an exact figure, but did say, "The same as GameCube plus an extra 64MB of main RAM." That number is by comparison nearly triple the amount of memory in GameCube. However, it is a far cry from the 512MBs present in Xbox 360.
One studio we spoke to hinted at the possibility of accessing further Revolution RAM, but its comments were cryptic. "There is more RAM that you can use, but Nintendo is using that for general memory, like game saves and all sorts of other things. You could use it, but you can't rely on it." This comment seems to suggest that developers might be able to tap into Revolution's 512MBs of on-board Flash memory, but to our knowledge such a solution would be too slow to utilize in games. (...)
Asked if it was developing for Revolution, one major third party source said that it was well past the experimental stage and was evaluating what types of games might work on the platform. "We are looking at it quite differently. It's like another current generation platform for us. But it's such a nice controller that it opens up a lot of possibilities. It's very different and it's very precise."
Finally, quizzed about publishers' internal reaction to the device, a source responded: "People are interested, but they're still taking it all in at the moment. I'm sure [Nintendo is] going to get a fair amount of support. Probably a lot of people will initially look at existing franchises and whether or not they can kind of do customized versions for Revolution using most of the assets they've got. But whether they'll say, "Okay, let's do something completely original for it," that's the other question because it could be quite expensive to do that. Not as expensive as doing a PS3 or Xbox 360 game. But if you're a third party and you want to do cross platform, if you're doing a game on 360 you can do it on PS3 or PC using the same assets and that does make it a bit easier."
Also, IGN has this story concerning the launch of the Revolution. According to a developer who refused to be named, the console will launch Thanksgiving 2006 (late November). I have not directly heard otherwise but consider November too late. I prefer to trust the good people over at SPOnG, who have been told of a June launch.
Sources: IGN, IGN, SPOnG
Thanks to: Raphael
40 comments:
Nice summary dude =)
But still no new information ...
I guess the Spong date refers to the japanese Launch. I think June would be right for Japan and then like Iwata said not more than 14 weeks later in US/EU. Although I believe EU will get the Revolution last again - nobody takes the EU market really serious except Microsoft.
The IGN hardware talk sounds to much like a rumour for me. After all other developers already said that the Revolution will be a powerfull machine (of course you can compare numbers between Revolution -> 360/PS3). Furthermore I doubt Nintendo spends millions of dollars for a minor upgrade. I am sure IBM and ATI want to show what they can do because I heard that Nintendo spend the same amount of money (100 million $ ?!?) for developing a GPU.
Kind regards,
system_error!
Pretty bad news about the graphics. Revolution will be way too underpowered.
Falafelkid, what price do you think this could be released at? It has cheap Xbox+ quality chips, wireless technology, the controller, a 512MB SD card, cube controller and mem card ports and 2 USB ports. Do you think all this could be released for 100$?
Who knows, maybe there is some sort of Virtual Reality. The console itself and the controller will be pretty cheap, so they could easily include 50-100$ 3D glasses. It would also be a good excuse for not supporting HD. 480p beamed in your eyes would look the same as HD.
And why 2 USB ports? Doesn't sound like Nintendo at all. Maybe that's where you can connect the 3D glasses.
hmph, well, behind every rumor is a spark of truth, so there will be no graphical miracle in the end.
i hope, that the graphics will get better, or nintendo will fail in the eyes of many customers.
but they spend nearly the same ammount of money for R&D over at ATI as Microsoft did, so i don't think the chip will be THAT underpowered.
it would be a shame, if everything's up to the controller itself. i think it would be more enjoyable, if i'd have very good graphics and the new controller.
but i think we just have to wait until may 9...
the IGN guys also say that there will be many new information early next year
thats kinda good isnt it?
Early next year may as well be march or april. I'm at least expecting some screenshots and the official name but I'm not counting on it.
This is the same thing people said about the Xbox360, when the developers started making games for it. Dev kits everyone, dev kits. Don’t worry about the Revolution’s graphics. Jim Merrick would not lie about something like this to us.
I think Matt likes the Xbox360 too much, he needs to switch pages and let someone who is really excited about the Revolution do HIS job that he’s not doing. He’s lazy anyway. He swears up and down that he loves Nintendo but he is also a graphics whore and is swayed by the 360. I just wish he had some faith that Nintendo would be competitive in the graphics department. No Nintendo system has EVER disappointed anyone with their graphics capability, the Revolution will not either.
People scream and yell at these developer comments(just look at the ign revo boards jez) but they forget that all our fears were suppose to be gone when Jim Merrick said NO GRAPHICAL DIFFERENCE. What so now all that is gone? If the developers don’t have the GPU then basically they can’t and shouldn’t be allowed to make comments like that about the Revolution’s graphics.
Now Nintendo has to save the people who now don’t want to buy the system after hearing that its only a “souped up Xbox”. Thanks Matt for printing that lovely story. Like I said before, who side is he on? Where is Jim Merrick’s comments on the new ign Revolution page? Matt could have included them after he printed that the developers thought the system wasn’t very powerful; because he should be trying to reasure us, not dashing our hopes. I just think this is very fishy of Matt and I’m upset with this story about the so called “known” power of the Revolution without them having a GPU to work with.
Falafelkid, don't you think ign jumped the gun on this story?
If you email the developers behind RotR, Nibris, asking about the game's planned platform, they should send you a response expressing their desire to port the game over to both the Revolution and the DS. I suggest you do that and see what happens before you make a final judgement on the "rumor", because many of us have sent such emails and gotten decent responses. Great reporting. Do you even follow up your own stories?
Excellent summary of the news. Glad to see you're back. As much as I'd like to assume a spring/summer release I think given the amount of reports we've been given about how many developers have dev-kits a Fall 06 release may seem more likely.
@Robotplague: Thanks. I understand you´re sceptical but Spong have been right about a number of things... it could be true.
@Metaldave: I agree. IGN is out of line, in my opinion. Again. What about the whole HD debacle?
@Anonymous: Aren´t you Mr. Cynical? This is supposed to be a development team that does not have a corporate website and uses the equivalent of a hotmail address as their official company email? You may have emailed them but you obviously haven´t checked the domain and failed to ask some important questions first. Because if you had, then you needn´t have sent that mail. Follow your own stories, mate. At least before you try to outsmart others.
Just a note - While X360 does have 512MB RAM in total, it's shared between the CPU and video card. And seeing as we don't know anything about Hollywood yet, it's hard to ocmpare the two... It could have 256MB RAM, for all we know. But either way, I mean, Metroid Prime 2 looks like an X360 game with worse textures. More RAM will fix that.
Well, Jim Merrick said "no graphical difference". But, honestly, i played Project Gotham Racing on the 360 at a local electronics-store on a HD-Display without any prejudice against the console. In fact i drove 20 kilometers to play it. And i'm really not THAT impressed. Yes, of course there is a little bit more detail. There are reflections on the cars (wait, haven't i seen that before?), there are really detailed cars (not really interesting for me as i'm more concentrated on the track when i'm playing racing games). But it's the same game it has ever been. The graphics are nice, but they are really not the big step forward compared to the original xbox. the higher resolution looks nice... ...on the specs-sheet. The Problem is that i had to pay a really big amount of money for this. Not only the 360 but the TV. I wonder what the games looked like on my standard Pal-TV. An i'm afraid that in that case the casual gamer indeed could not tell the difference, so Jim Merrick's comment would be absolutely true for them. Has anyone seen Conker's Bad Fur Day for the xbox in action? Really, i doubt that anyone who does not really have greater experience in (console-) gaming sees why he/she should pay up to 400 Euros for a 360 if a game for the "old" xbox can produce graphics like that. Besides the capability of HD. But if you don't have a HD-TV and don't plan to buy one next month, you don't really have the need for a 360.
Well, and i love playing Mariokart DS online. And that game surely doesn't look as good as any PSP-Racer of your choice.
well, you can't judge the xbxo360's graphics by now. these are all games of the very first software-generation. believe me, X360 games will look fantastic, in about a year and a half.
i mean... look at PS2 launchtitles and God of War of Resident Evil 4!
Yes, good point, but even the first generation-games on xbox, gamecube or Playtation 2 were far prettier than the latest games on Playstation or N64. And i simply don't see that gap this time. It doesn't thrill me as nearly every console-launch in the past has.
STFU SHOXWARE! you have no friggin Idea! XBOX§&= GAMES WONT look prettier in a year!
Originally Posted by MattIGN:
Whoa baby. I should put an end to some speculation before it runs out of control.
Tonight's article will be a continuation of last night's. Satoru Iwata has not personally delivered us the full spec breakdown. Nintendo doesn't want to talk specs and I don't think anything we do will really change that.
Tonight, we'll talk a bit more about CPU / GPU power. We'll also have a clarification on RAM. (And before you go thinking that we messed up and it has 512MBs, think again -- it's the other way.) And we'll reveal the real DVD capacity. That 12GB stuff was completely bogus.
That said, devs do have official documentation and it has been directly quoted to me over the phone.
Devs also speculate on a price point.
Can someone do me a favor and pass this along to the guys at the GA Forum before they toss me into the bonfire.
Thanks.
Matt
In my opinion Nintendo is going to blow the caps off everyone the minute they reveal the graphical power of the revolution. It is then that we will also for the first time see screenshots.
For the moment however I believe Nintendo has even got the developers wrapped in a veil of darkness. I think Nintendo purposely sent dev kits with advanced gamecube hardware to developers. The only reason for doing so would be that they want developers to keep their focus on the controller and its possibilities at this time.
The real secret which will be shown fully at the E3 is vaguely mentioned by Myamoto in an interview from a while back (I need to find the source but perhaps some may know it already):
likened creating popular games to the pick-up-and-play Rubik's Cube, saying that until now, the arrival of 3D graphics with PlayStation and Nintendo 64 was the biggest recent innovation in videogames. But what for the future?
Miyamoto said he hoped whole families would be able to enjoy the Revolution, not just the average gamer. "Most people think videogames are all about a child staring at a TV with a joystick in his hands. I don't. They should belong to the entire family. I want entire families to play together. That was the concept behind Revolution."
Most interestingly, when asked what he thought games would be like in the future, he suggested removing one of the most vital elements of the current gaming setup - the television. "It's convenient to make games that are played on TVs. But I always wanted to have a custom-sized screen that wasn't the typical four-cornered cathode-ray-tube TV. I've always thought that games would eventually break free of the confines of a TV screen to fill an entire room. But I would rather not say anything more about that."
Perhaps... just perhaps the entire idea of a new type of projection / virtual reality-like possibility isn't so far fetched anymore... since they want to kind of rule out tv's (perhaps for Real Revolution games) and for the moment keep the tv's in the picture (for backward capabilities like nes, snes, gamecube games).
Which means they will reveal the true revolution to the developers soon (as they won't be able to develop games in revolution style should they delay it too long). Afterwards developers will go crazy and spread the news on the net.
Nintendo will then make a public announcement not long after the first raves appeared..
Ofcourse they need to make developing games for the revolution similar to developing for the gamecube (at least a bit in the non graphics departments) in order to have games developed now be ready for launch in May 2006..
Well.. that's my 2 cents... apart from the quote nothing more then dreams from a Dutchman...
Falafelkid, welcome back. Can you elaborate on this statement you made:
"Not much here, either. I, for one, maintain that a new method of viewing games makes for (and will more than make up for) the lack of horsepower."
Can you tell us what new method of viewing games you're talking about?
While I'm hesitant to believe anything that IGN claims, there is more than enough evidence that the Revolution will be under powered. At this point, it really doesn't come as a surprise. But I don't think that Revolution's compartively weak hardware will necessarily be reflected in its graphics. Without the burden of HD, and given a powerful GPU and a much larger disc storage capacity, the Rev's graphics will be pretty. Mind you, they won't be as pretty as on the other consoles, and the system itself will still be lacking in specs, but to the average hardcore gamer, I think the difference will be minimal.
Besides, the success of the DS and the PS2 is proof enough that graphics aren't supremely important. And I too believe that the final secret of the Revolution has to do with an innovation in the display department, rendering most of what I just wrote inconsequential anyway.
have a pic the rev can defend himself from that big @$$ monster...
innovation...
http://www.freewebs.com/
arsenis/xvsrev-small.jpg
Welcome back falafelkid, Hope you injoyed your vacation. Hey, looks like your developer source that mentioned the $99 price point might be right acording to the information I read over at IGN looks like it'll be from 99-149 which means I'll be one of the first to own it over at the states.
To everyone: I belive the revolution powerful or not will set a NEW standard on videogame entertainment so don't get put of by the revo only being twice as powerful as the gamecube. And to be honest just knowing nintendo has to have BIG BALLS to aproach the industry way they are they are not letting their fans or future fans down(unless your a graphics hore). They're not crazy just innovaters
More Revolution Specs Uncovered
Developers come forward to reveal new performance details on Nintendo's next-generation console.
by Matt Casamassina
December 6, 2005 - Just yesterday IGN Revolution launched with technical details on Nintendo's next-generation console, codenamed Revolution. And today more development sources have come forward with both clarification and even more tech specs. The latest news begins to paint a clearer picture of Nintendo's aim with its next platform.
We cannot stress this enough: Revolution is not being positioned as a competitor to either Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. Nintendo has instead chosen to design a console that will be very affordable for consumers. For that very reason, say developers in the know, the Big N has opted out of filling the system with a massive supply of expensive RAM.
In yesterday's article, we wrote that Revolution would include 128MBs of RAM, or possibly less. Developers have clarified the makeup based on officially released Nintendo documentation. Revolution will build on GameCube's configuration of 24MBs 1T-SRAM and 16MBs D-RAM (40MBs) by adding an addition 64MBs of 1T-SRAM. The result is a supply of memory in Revolution that totals 104MBs. That number does not consider either the 512MBs of allegedly accessible (but hardly ideal) Flash RAM or the Hollywood GPU's on-board memory, said to be 3MBs by sources.
Revolution's Broadway CPU, developed by IBM, is an extension of the Gekko CPU in GameCube, according to official Nintendo documentation passed to us by software houses. The Hollywood GPU, meanwhile, is believed to be an extension of the Flipper GPU in GameCube. Since developers have not gone hands-on with the GPU, they can only go on Nintendo documentation, which is limited.
Exact clock rates were not disclosed, but one development source we spoke to had this to say of the Revolution CPU and GPU: "Basically, take a GameCube, double the clock rate of the CPU and GPU and you're done."
We presented that description to another informed studio, which clarified that the clock rates may even fall short of doubling those on GameCube.
"The CPU is the same as Gekko with one and a half to two times the performance and improved caching," said a source. "Our guys experimented with it and think they'll be able to get about twice the performance as GameCube."
"It's a gamble for the Big N," said another source. "It's not about horsepower for them -- it's about innovation and gameplay."
We've also been able to unearth firm details on the storage capacity for Revolution discs. Recent rumors suggesting that the discs can hold 12GBs of data are false. In fact, Revolution discs can store 4.7GBs of data on a single layer or 8.5GBs when double-layered on a single-side. This is a massive jump from the 1.5GB capacity of GameCube discs and more than enough storage capacity for any non-high-definition game.
Readers discouraged by Revolution's seeming lack of horsepower when compared to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 should remember that Nintendo is not interested in competing in the high-definition gaming arena, and as a standard-definition console, Revolution is more than capable. Capcom's Resident Evil 4 remains one of the most gorgeous games this generation and it ran on GameCube, a console at least half as powerful according to developer reports.
Software houses we spoke with also waxed on the immediate advantage to Nintendo's approach with Revolution, which is, of course, system price. Every developer was in agreement that Revolution should launch with a price tag of $149 or lower. Some speculated that based on the tech, a $99 price point would not be out of the question.
Stay tuned for more as it develops.
I don't understand this. Ddn't Nintendo spend roughly the same amount as Microsoft on developing the CPU?
Falafelkid, the more I read, the more I think that you are right about the new way to view games. I wonder if this holds any truth though and want to know how they would pull something like this off.
I think nintendo will give us a little info for x-mas. it is about giving.
I thought Miyamoto was interviewed and stated that the price for the Revolution was going to be $129 USD on launch.
If what IGN is true there has to be more to the system than meets the eye.
would you clarify why the two on top were deleted, i follow your blog very often, first i've seen this.
great blog falafelkid and welcome back hope you release some stres... ...you know what i mean!!
Hi Arsenis. I didn´t delete those comments. I never delete comments. It was the author - and it was because they were double posts.
@Anonymous: Please go back to the first entries of the blog and read the posts about AR. Then you get an idea of what I mean by a different method of viewing. Also check the NASA supported project dealing with stereoscopic 3D projection. It´s quite interesting because it does not require any headgear whatsoever and could come quite cheap.
About the price point: Obviously, a $99 price tag is a possibility (and remember where you heard it first, folks!). I would expect, though, that this is incompatible with either AR or 3D projection. In fact, a $99 price would be thought of as the last secret, I guess. However, I have been told that there is another secret and that it´s way bigger than the controller. That does not easily fit the dumping price in my mind...
Yeh that double post was me. Been having problems with this blog today for some reason.
der billige preis ist die überraschung! aber dann weiß ich echt nicht, warum ati so ausgiebig bezahlt wurde, wie es einige bahaupten.
So ... If revolution have 2 part ...
First time revolution's price come form nintendo. Thay say thay aim for 200$ ... Now think about this. Revolution 99-150$ + 3D stereoscopic at 480p 100$ (or less)
falafelkid, since the graphics of the Rev are barely better than Xbox, do you think Revolution will include a PPU after all?
Check this out from 1up.com
Just as gamers are spawning 100 pages threads sobbing over alleged Revolution specs that don't match up to the competition comes a contradictory statement from executive VP of sales and marketing Reggie Fils-Aime during the UBS 33rd Annual Global Media Conference proclaiming Revolution will be "easy to port" for third party developers.
It's easy to see Nintendo's logic, though. Even though Revolution won't have the same memory bandwidth as Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the familiarity with current generation development and tools that Revolution takes advantage of means most companies shouldn't have much trouble working Revolution into the mix.
Then again, that's bound to create similar situations that have occurred with multi-platform development currently, where companies simply emphasized work on PlayStation 2 and Xbox (where much of the money was) and left many GameCube ports to languish unpolished. With Revolution's interface providing a whole new obstacle, watching developers work around should prove interesting.
As more developers receive their finalized Revolution development kits, we should be hearing more about what this means in real-world applications. Maybe the gap isn't as significant as everyone's guessing. Stay tuned for more.
Easy to port eh? If you doubt the graphics still, think about this: Half Life 2 was ported to the Xbox right? Was it easy for them to make the game look as close to the PC version as possible? No, I bet it was a pain but they still did it.
Now we here from Reggie himself that ports to Revolution will be easy, so it doesn't sound like developers will have to tinker and have a hard time making the games look almost as good as the 360 or PS3 because they will look as good on a SDTV. If the Revolution is only a little more powerful than Xbox, what has IBM and ATI been doing for Nintendo since 2001? Not that much. So, I believe that yes the specs may seem low but the performance on regular tv's should be just as good.
Thanks for the little bit of publicity, Falafelkid.
I'm not too sure what to think on IGN's "inside sources." I'm sick and tired of them.
Inside sources, that is. I don't hate websites.
I'm suprised no one saw the news story on gamespot about NIRBRIS actually wanting to develop Raid over the River exclusively for Revolution and PC.
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