Nintendo: Ready to Start a Revolution - The Unique Revolution and the Hardware Behind It
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The coolest announcement so far is that the Rev will work with years of past video games from Nintendo and other publishers. Playing Mario World and Super Metroid sounds very good for some nostalgic gaming, especially on a system that works a little more reliably than my circa 1993 SNES. The slot loading disc drive will also be compatible with GameCube games and DVDs, and the top of the Revolution has ports for Cube controllers.
The older games will be purchased and downloaded through the Virtual Console, which is what Nintendo is calling its online service at the moment. To prevent piracy, Nintendo will use a proprietary DRM system. Sega and Hudson have joined Nintendo in this, so the Revolution will emulate the NES, SNES, and N64, as well as the Sega Genesis and TurboGrfx. It stores the games on the Rev’s built-in 512 MB flash memory, though there are slots to plug in expansion SD cards and rumors are going around that Nintendo might support adding a third-party hard drive to the system.
The system will also do just about everything wirelessly; besides the controllers, it will connect to both the internet and Nintendo DS portables through wireless connections. The only wire you need to use should be the power plug. Even though I don’t have a DS, I’ll be very interested to see if the Rev is a simple multiplayer hub or a lot more. It could function as a third “team” screen, or maybe the Revolution could join the game.
The Revolution will also stand out because of its price. It is predicted to be considerably cheaper than the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, and the games are also supposed to be less. Speculation varies widely online about what this means. In general, the average guess and the suggestion from game studios is that the Revolution will cost about $200, perhaps $150. The SDK for developing games also shows that Nintendo plans to provide a bargain. Their SDK is said to cost $2000 and be easy (i.e. cheap) to program for. Compare that to the Playstation ($4,000) and Playstation 2 ($20,000), and you’ll see that should help deflate the price of third party games considerably.
At $200 though, there’s no possibility the Revolution will be as powerful as the other next-gen systems. Of course, it doesn’t need 3 multithreaded processors to make fun and immersive games. Nintendo of Europe’s Senior Director of Marketing Jim Merrick said this about releasing the exact specs:
Regarding the specifications, we will probably never 'release' this information as we feel that it is largely irrelevant. While some of our competitors enjoy comparing specifications, it has little or nothing to do with how satisfied the consumers will be with the system and the games once they are released. (source)
It’s true that the hardware doesn’t always make the system. That doesn’t stop people from talking about it. Rumours from an undisclosed (and unreliable) source say that the Revolution will be using a 729 MHz “Broadway” processor based on the IBM PowerPC chip, a 243 MHz “Hollywood” video card from ATI, and have roughly 88 MB of memory. If these specs are close, that puts the Revolution a little beyond the original Xbox in terms of raw clockspeeds and megabytes.
It falls far short of the potential the multicore PS3 cell processor and X360's set of 3 processors. People have been quick to point out that Xbox graphics are still acceptable and modern; also the multiprocessor systems are more difficult for programmers (and disputably not necessary), so games probably won’t use the full potential, especially when developers are trying to make games that easily port from one system to another. The Revolution is not intended for gamers who want bleeding edge graphics; it’s not even in direct competition with the other systems.
By a long shot though, the most intriguing thing about the game system is the new controller. It’s also what makes the system more alluring to newbie game players.
Next: A Controller to Change Gaming >>
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