Jeux-France: "Iwata to speak for one hour at GDC"

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata will be holding a one-hour keynote speech at the upcoming Game Developers Conference, Jeux-France reports. The Babelfish translation of the article is only partly discernable. This is what I can make out: The speech is to take place on the 23rd of March, from 10:30 - 11:30. It will focus on the Nintendo DS, but Revolution news is also expected.

There is also mention of a link on the GDC´s keynote page having been removed. The current page still has no complete list of keynote speakers. I have been keeping an eye on that page daily, though. I never saw any relevant information disappear. Perhaps a proper translation of the article can bring a little light into this.

EDIT No need of any translations anymore. It´s official: Satoru Iwata will headline the list of keynote speakers. The Game Developers Conference page confirms:

Platform Keynote: Disrupting Development

Satoru Iwata
President, Nintendo Co., Ltd.
Thursday, March 23
10:30 – 11:30am

This year will see the arrival of more new portable and home game systems, and outside attention remains predictably focused on technical specifications and processing muscle. This is not trivial; but also not newsworthy. After all, every new system is more powerful than its predecessor.

Developers know what drives the video game business. It is our work. We are the creators, the innovators, the entertainers. We understand that people who imagine things, even more than the people who engineer them, are the key to reaching players.

Unfortunately, the application of imagination is getting more and more difficult. Larger games require more hours, more manpower, and a lot more money. And as budgets rise, the appetite for risk falls.

As Nintendo has demonstrated with Nintendo DS, our goal is to expand the industry to new players—and to surprise existing players.

In a speech entitled, ”Disrupting Development,” Nintendo President Satoru Iwata will reveal the backstory of how a string of recent disruptive products from Nintendo—the Nintendo DS, the ‘brain-training’ games, and Nintendo WiFi Connection—surprised the market. He will share his thoughts on the role Nintendo’s video game systems will play in expanding the market and widening the possibilities for developers.

What Iwata may reveal is another thing, though. The UK´s premier industry magazine MCV has been told that Iwata will unveil key details. While I trust MCV´s judgement, they wouldn´t tell me anything about their source. It need not even have been a Nintendo employee. So their information could be wrong. I myself think that the name of the system will be revealed. I do not expect to see any screenshots or footage, though.

Source: Jeux-France
Image source: SPOnG
Thanks to: Vaati´s Legacy, HereticPB, Colin

Slight redesign

Just finished my slight redesign of the page. I also thought that ´Nintendo-Revolution´ was a better title. The old one was a bit long. Since I know virtually nothing about HTML, please let me know if you have any trouble viewing this. The recommended browser for this page remains Firefox.

EDIT Again, I sincerely apologize for the technical problems the redesign caused. For some reason, comments were automatically deleted and my updates vanished too. That is why the logos still looked half-baked and the font was wrong. I hope to have fixed the problems. Please stick with this page. Updates will be coming very soon.

Key Revolution details by March?

Industry magazine MCV UK has been tipped off by insiders that Nintendo president Satoru Iwata will divulge ´key details´ about the Revolution in less than seven weeks. Here´s their story:

MCV understands that Nintendo president Satoru Iwata is set to unveil some key details regarding the enigmatic next-gen Revolution console at the Games Developers Conference in March.

Though many have presumed that all new information would be kept under wraps until E3 in May, senior sources suggest Iwata will choose to make key announcements, possibly including pricing and release details, earlier.

With a Nintendo Europe press release this week reaffirming that Revolution is still on track for a European launch this year, this news puts more pressure on Sony, whose continued silence is reducing the likelihood of a 2006 European release for PS3.

The Game Developers Conference will take place from the 20th to the 24th of March in San Jose. Whether Iwata will be present or not is not yet confirmed. The list of keynote speakers will be posted here, most likely within the next few days. It was promised by January and is thus long overdue.

On the phone, the MCV editors felt very confident that their source was reliable but, obviously, declined to give any more details. It is important to bear in mind here that MCV is the leading industry magazine in many important markets, including Germany and the UK. In the past, their inside sources proved extremely reliable.

Source: MCV UK
Thanks to: Grandmaster B