Lots of news but no information

While I was away, there was plenty news. However (and unfortunately), there was no new information. Here´s the round-up and some comments for the record.

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." (...)

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."

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.

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