Nintendo Revolution for 2006?

I had more or less guess a similar time frame for the Revolution, but this seems to confirm that Nintendo is looking to launch the system in the middle of next-year. FWIW, I'm not even sure if the PS3 has actually had anything this definitive about its release date, which is somewhat surprising since it may launch before the Revolution by 1-3 months possibly.

So now we will know when it will come out. Now all we have to worry about it what is so "revolutionary."

 

Right now? PC by far. There are some great looking games though, such as a Metal Gear Solid 3, Gran Turismo 4, Ninja Gaiden, Resident Evil 4, Zelda etc. that, while not at the same technical level as the average PC game, look as good or even better than some PC games. However, this is mostly due to art direction than anything else really.

This should all change with the next-gen consoles though. Starting this fall, I would say that the average next-gen game will look way better than anything on the PC (technically and probably artistically). Depending on exactly how advanced the hardware for each console is, this could last for a little while (probably at least a year). Plus, if the PC gaming world fails to switch to Blu-ray/HD-DVD anytime soon, the PS3 (and maybe Revolution) will have a big advantage there.

Very true. I especially like reading all the rumors on the Revolution, which, since Nintendo hasn't said much about their console, normally consist of just about anything you can think of. One of them that I liked included the hardware setup of the Revolution. It basically said it would have:
4 IBM Custom Cores
1 Physics Processor
2 SLI ATI cards

There were more specifics to it, plus something I think I missed (yes...there was more IIRC), but I just laughed reading those specs. For a company that didn't seem to care about graphics, that system would probably own both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 with a setup like that. It would cost Nintendo pretty everything they have saved up, but that would be one beast of a console.

Hopefully, some of these rumors can go away at the end of next week.

 

Yeah, I got into the habit of referring to any 2 graphics cards working together as SLI. Although I think the original rumor had SLI as well, which makes it more ridiculous from a technical standpoint.

 

That's the million (billion?) dollar question. Little is known about the console except that IBM will provide the CPU, ATI will provide the GPU, the console will be backwards compatible with the GC, the console will be use Wi-Fi (IIRC), and I think the DS and the console will have some sort of connectivity. Oh yeah, and apparently MoSys is helping with the ram. Not much else is really known, other than it will be "revolutionary."

I did hear from my friend's cousin's girlfriend's uncle that there will probably be a Mario and Zelda game on the next console, and possibly a Metroid game.

And I doubt the GC is the worst console ever. At least it has sold almost 20 m consoles (or somewhere around there). Consoles like the Phantom can't even get to the point to sell one. And that's just "current" consoles. There have been a lot of gaming consoles, and some of them have been pretty crappy.

 

I think that was the news I was referring to earlier when I made the Wi-Fi comment. I too thought they were against online gaming until a little prior to GDC when all that Wi-Fi stuff started going around.

As far as whether or not it is too soon for Nintendo, I think it is probably at about the right time. They've already cut the price of the GC quite a bit, and after Zelda comes out, they would have already made a lot of money from their big hitters. Since they're so profitable, it probably doesn't matter if they decide to cut a generation short by a year or so, IMO.

Microsoft, on the other hand, should have waited a little longer IMO. The Xbox has started to pick up some "momentum" in the past 6 months or so and could really benefit from the sales of great games. Basically, I think the Xbox can still be milked a little more. The PS2 has been out for 5 years (6 years when the PS3 comes out), and it can still be milked quite a bit (waiting for that $99 price tag). Plus, if they waited some more, they had the possibility of reclaiming the power advantage next-gen, as opposed to being possibly the weakest one instead.

For Sony's sake, there better not be 3-4 year generations from now on. Their whole business plan consists of taking big hits the first few years, and the start receiving profits from then on. A 3-4 year gen would hardly be enough time to give them anything worth the R&D they spend on console technology.

Back to Nintendo. While I don't like some of their decisions, they seem to know how to run things, considering how much money they make from the video game business. As far as profitability goes, Microsoft and Nintendo seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum. Microsoft loses billions of dollars by selling 20+ m consoles; Nintendo makes billions of dollars by selling 20+ m consoles. I sometimes wonder if Nintendo even cares about the #1 spot as long as they remain profitable.