by Anton Shilov
01/23/2006 | 05:10 AM
In a bid to attract as many new gamers as possible, console maker Nintendo said that its forthcoming Revolution game-console will be affordable and will be massively available at launch. This will allow more people to get it and enjoy it already this year before the Thanksgiving, according to the firm’s executives.
“The next-generation console from Nintendo, code-named Revolution, will cost less than $300. Our third resolution is to stop turning away new players,” said Reggie Fils-Aime, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Nintendo, in an interview with Cnet News.com.
According to the executive at the company, Nintendo wants its console to be really affordable and exciting. A core-feature of the gaming machine will be its advanced wireless controller, which is expected to allow new types of usage models for the console. It is unclear whether the Revolution will be able to output onto high definition television and whether will take advantage of higher resolutions, but Mr. Fils-Aime claims that users will not be obliged to get a new TV set to play games, like in case of the PlayStation 3, which can output using HDMI connector only.
Meanwhile, Satoru Iwata, the president of Nintendo, has said in an interview with Japanese newspaper Sankei Shinbun that the machine would be out by Thanksgiving in
At the Game Developer Conference (GDC) 2005 Nintendo officially unveiled plans to launch its next-generation console code-named Revolution with IBM’s code-named Broadway processor and ATI’s code-named Hollywood visual processing unit. ATI and IBM also developed the core components for Nintendo’s GameCube console. The console will be backwards compatible with the currently shipped GameCube and will also feature trendy Wi-Fi features. It is unknown whether the console will feature any other wireless technologies apart from wireless networking.
Nintendo officially states that the code-named Revolution console will play all of Nintendo GameCube games, and deliver downloadable access to 20 years of fan-favorite titles originally released for Nintendo 64, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and even the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).