Revolution in U.S. Before Thanksgiving

[Scaryboy]

Both Gamespot (http://www.gamespot.com/news/6142572.html) and Next Generation (http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2079&Itemid=2) are reporting that the Nintendo Revolution will launch in the USA before Thanksgiving.

In a rare insight into the firm's planning for Revolution's launch, which has been shrouded in secrecy for much of the last three months. Iwata told Japan's Sankei Shinbun that any release later than November would be a problem.

He said, "We can't talk about Revolution's release date, but we don't want to miss the year-end sales battle. In the U.S., we must release it by Thanksgiving, or retailers won't give us the support we need."
Editor: I think that this news falls into the "No shit, Sherlock." category. Missing the Holiday season would doom any new console system.

[NoName]

Editor: I think that this news falls into the "No shit, Sherlock." category. Missing the Holiday season would doom any new console system.
I agree, though it's still nice to hear Nintendo confirm the obvious.

The main question is how many units will be ready to ship. While Microsoft launched in time for the holiday season, the lack of supply hurt many potential holiday sales.

[Balthasar]

.Editor: I think that this news falls into the "No shit, Sherlock." category. Missing the Holiday season would doom any new console system.
Unless they release it in 2007.

[Evil Avatar]

I agree, though it's still nice to hear Nintendo confirm the obvious.

The main question is how many units will be ready to ship. While Microsoft launched in time for the holiday season, the lack of supply hurt many potential holiday sales.

Nintendo has never been one for being short supply. I seem to remember that you could get the DS right off the shelf within a week or two of the system launch.

[Abednigo]

The main question is how many units will be ready to ship. While Microsoft launched in time for the holiday season, the lack of supply hurt many potential holiday sales.

You said what I was going to say. Not only does missing the holidays hurt a new console, but lack of available systems probably hurts worse. If they can release the Revolution in November, and have so many available that ANYONE could walk into Best Buy or Gamestop and pick up one without camping out in a huge line 36 hours before the release, and sell it at $199 or less...I can't wait to see how it turns out. And hopefully they will have some must own titles available at launch too (with plenty of copies to go around).

[Evil Avatar]

Unless they release it in 2007.

Launching two years after the Xbox 360 and a year after the Playstation 3 and then launching with a system that is barely more powerful than the Gamecube would pretty much guarantee that the only 3rd party support they would get would be from the developers whose games you would never purchase.

[drakkarim]

i think that's a stupid assumption, by that logic both PS3 and Revolution have failed because they didn't make the 05 holiday season like the 360 did (more or less).

did any house say "we're not going to develop for those 2 because they didn't make the holiday launch this year", bullshit, the same will be true this holiday season if either misses it.

they'll develop for all 3 just because between the 3 audiences they can milk the biggest amount of moolah.

any developer that says otherwise is lying through their teeth.

[Magnanimous Gnome]

Dang, I submitted this too, but it seems I was too late.

I'm kind of surprised that they are launching in the U.S. first. Pleasantly surprised, but suprised nonetheless. This year's E3 is going to be great.

[Valkyrist]

Editor: I think that this news falls into the "No shit, Sherlock." category. Missing the Holiday season would doom any new console system.
Actually, I really wonder about this...

When was the last system launch that was NOT right before xmas? I honestly wonder if a early-mid summer launch might be better. Xmas shopping normally keeps people's wallets pretty tight, but summer tends to be VERY slow. On top of that, there wouldn't be as big of a worry about a AAA title for a competing system coming out at the same time as your launch date. If you could get it out earlier, you could take advantage of all the kids getting out for summer break.

Just a thought.

[Evil Avatar]

Actually, I really wonder about this...

When was the last system launch that was NOT right before xmas?

I think it was the Dreamcast. But, the Dreamcast failed because of the lack of 3rd party support. As much as we like to bash on Electronic Arts, they can make or break a console system.

[Abednigo]

I think it was the Dreamcast. But, the Dreamcast failed because of the lack of 3rd party support. As much as we like to bash on Electronic Arts, they can make or break a console system.

The Dreamcast came out 9/9/99 as I recall. What an awesome system! I still have it and don't have the heart to get rid of it, even if I only have a handful of games that are worth playing on it.

[Nessus]

I agree that if Nintendo missed the holiday 06 Rev is screwed. They can't afford to launch in 07.

[Kelegacy]

Dang, I submitted this too, but it seems I was too late.

I'm kind of surprised that they are launching in the U.S. first. Pleasantly surprised, but suprised nonetheless. This year's E3 is going to be great.
Yeah, Boy! Anyone want to smuggle me into E3 with them?

!Viva the mothafuckin' Revolution!

[Kamalot]

Actually, I really wonder about this...

When was the last system launch that was NOT right before xmas?
PSP launched around easter if I'm not mistaken.

People forget that system's launch for some reason though. Maybe cause it wasn't before Christmas?

[Kamalot]

As much as we like to bash on Electronic Arts, they can make or break a console system.
I'd rather have a Dreamcast than a PS2 any day of the week. Electronic Arts can keep their trash. Give me Jet Grind Radio, Skies of Arcadia, Shenmue, Space Channel 5, Rez, Phantasy Star Online, Chu Chu Rocket, , Power Stone, Crazy Taxi, Samba De Amigo, Outtrigger, Sonic the Hedgehog and others I can't even think of right now any day of the week over Electronic 'Art's drek.

[Mr. Lake]

I agree that if Nintendo missed the holiday 06 Rev is screwed. They can't afford to launch in 07.

Yes they can. In fact, they are better off launching in the spring or summer of 07 than they are just before winter. Logic you ask? Simple: You need to give a console way more time before Thanksgiving to strengthen the consumer base for the real money-maker during Christmas...GAMES.

Case in point: Microsoft pretty much screwed most of the third-party game developers out there by releasing the 360 at a time where software should take priority; as games are the primary revenue for those systems. Xbox 360 should have come out three or four months later than it did rather than November.

It's a big reason why games sales were down during the holidays in 2005 and then rose again shortly after...everyone wanted to get their hands on a 360 for Christmas. When most of them couldn't, they held out for a while and some of those people gave in and bought current-generation titles. I'm not saying it's the only reason sales were down...hurricanes and oil prices and what-not. But releasing a console just before the holidays is a BAD idea and the gaming industry as a whole suffers from it.

[Camalot]

I'd rather have a Dreamcast than a PS2 any day of the week.

Do you hate sony or something? Next thing you'll be saying is that the PSP sucks or something.

[Mozgus]

I think it was the Dreamcast. But, the Dreamcast failed because of the lack of 3rd party support. As much as we like to bash on Electronic Arts, they can make or break a console system.
Funny. 85% of my Dreamcast collection is third party titles. And they are damn good ones at that.

[thecrazyd]

Launching two years after the Xbox 360 and a year after the Playstation 3 and then launching with a system that is barely more powerful than the Gamecube would pretty much guarantee that the only 3rd party support they would get would be from the developers whose games you would never purchase.
Barely more powerful then the Gamecube? You are such a fucking troll. Evil, I will personally bet you a console of your choice that the Rev will have visuals on par with the 360 and PS3, just not in high def.

[rein]

PSP launched around easter if I'm not mistaken.

People forget that system's launch for some reason though. Maybe cause it wasn't before Christmas?

I think it has more to do with it being a hand held. You are right though. It did launch well in advance of the holiday season.

[Yeti2005]

Barely more powerful then the Gamecube? You are such a fucking troll. Evil, I will personally bet you a console of your choice that the Rev will have visuals on par with the 360 and PS3, just not in high def.

Err not to rain on your parade but how can the visuals possibly be on par if one system is in 640x480 and the other systems are in 1280x720 or 1920x1080? I have no doubt the Revolution will look nice but it won't be able to keep up graphically with the 360 or PS3 (which is ok because that's not what Nintendo is trying to do).

[Phhhh]

The Saturn was released in May. It's early launch was doom for the system IMO.

[Kamalot]

Err not to rain on your parade but how can the visuals possibly be on par if one system is in 640x480 and the other systems are in 1280x720 or 1920x1080? I have no doubt the Revolution will look nice but it won't be able to keep up graphically with the 360 or PS3 (which is ok because that's not what Nintendo is trying to do).

Well, A standard-definition DVD looks better than a HD video game, so I'd say there is plenty of room to enhance and expand the visuals in SD.

Resolution isn't everything.

[rein]

The Saturn was released in May. It's early launch was doom for the system IMO.

32x vs Saturn was the doom of the systems launch. I remember those days. Talk about insecurity in what you were buying. While IMO Microsoft screwed up with the dual sku it comes nothing close to the mess of the Sega/cd/32x vs Saturn back then. Sega lost a lot of momentum with the 32x coming out just before the Saturn.

[Mozgus]

Resolution isn't everything.
Tell that to Tecmo. Dead or Alive 4 looks exactly like DOA2 on Dreamcast in my eyes, except it is higher resolution. Leik OMG?

[CapnBob]

Tell that to Tecmo. Dead or Alive 4 looks exactly like DOA2 on Dreamcast in my eyes, except it is higher resolution. Leik OMG?

The backgrounds are a good bit improved... the characters stopped improving after the Dreamcast version because Team Ninja apparently bases all their character models off of department store mannequins instead of real humans, which is a level of realism that the Dreamcast was capable of achieving.

[Balthasar]

Err not to rain on your parade but how can the visuals possibly be on par if one system is in 640x480 and the other systems are in 1280x720 or 1920x1080? I have no doubt the Revolution will look nice but it won't be able to keep up graphically with the 360 or PS3 (which is ok because that's not what Nintendo is trying to do).
Resolution is not all there is to graphical quality. All that will help to determin is sharpness/clarity of the picture. Not that I'm agreeing that the Revolution will be on par with either of those systems graphically. Everything said about that system indicates Nintendo is dropping out of the "graphics war."

[Nite_Moogle]

I think that it's going to take all of about 30-60 minutes for most gamers with the new controller before everyone is going to buy the damn thing regardless of who supports it. I'm really looking forward to the new controller.

[Magnanimous Gnome]

Yeah, Boy! Anyone want to smuggle me into E3 with them?

!Viva the mothafuckin' Revolution!

Sadly I'm not going to E3 - I'll just be watching coverage online. The gaming sites take a major performance hit during E3 - I remember when I was an IGN insider and they swore up and down that the E3 footage would be for Insider's only. Then they let everyone watch it, thus resulting in us paid subscribers getting downloads in the 4k/sec range. I cancelled my subscription after that and haven't looked back.

I'd love to go though!! ;)


As for systems launching during the spring or summer, the GBA launched in June 2000 in the US and sold like hotcakes. The theory that a console has to launch during the holidays is silly. It certainly didn't do anything for MS except create shortages.

[Balthasar]

I think that it's going to take all of about 30-60 minutes for most gamers with the new controller before everyone is going to buy the damn thing regardless of who supports it.
While I am very much in favor of Nintendo's controller, it's useless if there aren't good games for it.

[Kamalot]

I think that it's going to take all of about 30-60 minutes for most gamers with the new controller before everyone is going to buy the damn thing regardless of who supports it. I'm really looking forward to the new controller.
You know, I think that most people only oggle over higher resolutions for 30-40 minutes before they realize it is all window dressing over gameplay. The gameplay better be there otherwise, after 40 min, people aren't coming back to your shiny new game.

[Nessus]

"Evil, I will personally bet you a console of your choice that the Rev will have visuals on par with the 360 and PS3, just not in high def."


Personally I wouldn't do that. I love Nintendo and I'm most looking forward to the Rev of the 3 new consoles, but I'm pretty sure it won't be in the same league as the other two graphically. It'll look better than current gen, but I'd be surprised if it was capable of running the Unreal 3 engine.

I also agree though I don't really care about HDTV. I've seen the Xbox 360 kiosks with HDTVs. I hate the way they look. I hate the high contrast.

[Nite_Moogle]

While I am very much in favor of Nintendo's controller, it's useless if there aren't good games for it.
I am pretty sure that Nintendo would be clinically out of their collective minds if they released the Revolution without Smash Bros. as a launch title. Based on them having a working demo of it at E3 2005, we might even see Metroid as a launch title to showcase the FPS capabilities of the controller, and if that's playable online... I know I'll personally tell the Master Chief to kiss my ass go back to my baby Samus. <3

[mister_slim]

This is going to be an interesting E3. The Rev demo lines are going to be really long. Hopefully Nintendo will get their manufacturing sorted out well and launch with sufficient quantities.

[Kelegacy]

I am pretty sure that Nintendo would be clinically out of their collective minds if they released the Revolution without Smash Bros. as a launch title. Based on them having a working demo of it at E3 2005, we might even see Metroid as a launch title to showcase the FPS capabilities of the controller, and if that's playable online... I know I'll personally tell the Master Chief to kiss my ass go back to my baby Samus. <3
More like Master Chump, eh? I played Metroid Prime for the first time over the weekend and was shocked at how good it was. I'm a little late in the generation to finally be playing it, but I'm glad I have done so.

[Achilles]

they'll develop for all 3 just because between the 3 audiences they can milk the biggest amount of moolah.

any developer that says otherwise is lying through their teeth.Well keep in mind that between the lack of power and the completely different controller, developers won't find an easy time porting the game to the Revolution. You may see the initial round of ports from Xbox and PS2 versions, but after a while those will dry up as the two old systems stopped being supported. After that they'll have to make a game for the Rev, and a game for the other two, rather than a game for all three. So if the sales don't support it, I expect there to be fewer ports to it than there were to the Cube.

[Babbster]

I also agree though I don't really care about HDTV. I've seen the Xbox 360 kiosks with HDTVs. I hate the way they look. I hate the high contrast.

That's a pretty dumb point to bring up. First off, those kiosks are in locations saturated to hell and gone with fluorescent lighting which is going to have an adverse affect on a display anyway - something places like Best Buy have realized and when I go to my local store the TV section is dimly lit compared to other areas. Second, all TVs ship with contrast turned way the hell up (because most people are attracted to bright, shiny screens) and they're unlikely to be fine-tuned by local staff because it's time-consuming and it requires a special disc or signal (DVD Essentials or similar signal for 480i/p - a PC would probably be best since HD LCD resolutions can vary from panel to panel) to do properly.

As for people claiming not to care about HDTV resolutions coming into console gaming, y'all are either liars or don't plan on having either an HDTV or a PC monitor until the next console generation or beyond. Higher resolutions can and will impact gameplay as we go on from here because they permit an increasingly realistic visual representation. That doesn't mean that humans look more human or true "realism" per se, as a game could still be "cartoony" and still benefit from higher resolutions. What I'm thinking of in particular are increases in the amount of detail that can be seen in a game at a greater distance - flight simulators might be the best example of this in that you can see for miles but in many games over the years another aircraft tends to look like a "dot" for too long as range decreases. Pikmin 1&2 are a couple more games that I think could have been even better at higher resolutions in that you could see more of the field of play while retaining enough detail to pick out individual beasties.

Don't misunderstand. I'll be on the Revolution bandwagon because it's going to be inexpensive (as is tradition with Nintendo) and it's going to have great games (assuming Nintendo's tradition continues in that area as well). But, dismissing HD gaming as unnecessary or pointless is disingenuous at best.

[Achilles]

Barely more powerful then the Gamecube? You are such a fucking troll. Evil, I will personally bet you a console of your choice that the Rev will have visuals on par with the 360 and PS3, just not in high def.A wager! So who gets to decide if it looks better? Really either you or Evil could just decide never to give in. Are we going to elect a panel? What target would you display it on? An HDTV or a 4:3 non-hdtv?

[mister_slim]

A wager! So who gets to decide if it looks better? Really either you or Evil could just decide never to give in. Are we going to elect a panel? What target would you display it on? An HDTV or a 4:3 non-hdtv?
Eh, grab 10 people of the street, Coke vs. Pepsi style. And his challenge implies a SDTV, though an EDTV would probably be fine as well.

[Magnanimous Gnome]

While I am very much in favor of Nintendo's controller, it's useless if there aren't good games for it.

Why would you ever think that there won't be good games on the system? All of Nintendo's systems have had good games on them - even the Virtual Boy. Nintendo consistently develops high quality titles. I'm not worried about the games in the least.


More like Master Chump, eh? I played Metroid Prime for the first time over the weekend and was shocked at how good it was. I'm a little late in the generation to finally be playing it, but I'm glad I have done so.

The game took my breath away the first time I booted it up. The art style is just spectacular - definitely one of the most beautiful games of the last gen. The atmosphere is perfect for a Metroid title.

[Kagger]

Well keep in mind that between the lack of power and the completely different controller, developers won't find an easy time porting the game to the Revolution. You may see the initial round of ports from Xbox and PS2 versions, but after a while those will dry up as the two old systems stopped being supported. After that they'll have to make a game for the Rev, and a game for the other two, rather than a game for all three. So if the sales don't support it, I expect there to be fewer ports to it than there were to the Cube.

But don't forget the controller shell they will have for it. But the graphics thing may still be a problem.

I'm ridiculously excited for the Rev.

[thecrazyd]

A wager! So who gets to decide if it looks better? Really either you or Evil could just decide never to give in. Are we going to elect a panel? What target would you display it on? An HDTV or a 4:3 non-hdtv?
Eh, it's inconsequential. Evil likes to talk shit, but he won't back it up.

[Kelegacy]

Eh, it's inconsequential. Evil likes to talk shit, but he won't back it up.
This is why I like you, thecrazyd; you are not intimidated by authority. :)

[Kamalot]

Well keep in mind that between the lack of power and the completely different controller, developers won't find an easy time porting the game to the Revolution. You may see the initial round of ports from Xbox and PS2 versions, but after a while those will dry up as the two old systems stopped being supported. After that they'll have to make a game for the Rev, and a game for the other two, rather than a game for all three. So if the sales don't support it, I expect there to be fewer ports to it than there were to the Cube.
Everyone who keeps complaining about the Revolution not working well with ports has a point, but let me put things into perspective...

Who wants ports?

If the Revolution really is revolutionary, it will work well for Revolution games. Why try to shoehorn an Xbox 360 or PS3 game onto the system?

If you want a great traditional game, get an Xbox 360 or PS3.

If you want something revolutionary, get a Revolution.

If you want both, get both!

But don't be shocked when the Revolution does not get every watered-down port and piece of shovelware known to mankind.

[thecrazyd]

This is why I like you, thecrazyd; you are not intimidated by authority. :)
Damn the man.

[boratika]

Maybe we'll see PSP->Rev ports. Maybe with some underdeveloped tacked on use for the controller.

Don't underestimate publishers' ability to find a way to port.

[Achilles]

Eh, it's inconsequential. Evil likes to talk shit, but he won't back it up.That could be, but I was actually thinking of taking you up on it! Not for a system though, I'll already own all those anyway. If it was on an HDTV I'd bet you $500 that Kameo will look better than any of the Revo's launch titles. However I can't test it on an EDTV or any of those, so I actually don't know what Kameo looks like on that target.