Harrison Touts Nintendo's Revolution

No, not the ex-Beatle, but rather Nintendo's vice president. We wager that John would probably have approved of Nintendo's philosophy.

One of the more, er, revolutionary aspects of Nintendo's Revolution is its ability to play games from the company's bounteous collection of classic titles dating all the way back to the NES. The announcement of Revolution's virtual console abilities, as Nintendo is calling it, drew a huge response at the company's pre-E3 press conference, but there was a spectre looming large: pricing.

Harrison is a firm proponent of getting jiggy with Mario

And while no one is talking numbers yet, George Harrison, Nintendo's vice president, revealed that we can expect a mixed bag of costs - some games will come free and some will carry a charge.

"We've used some of the older games already as little bonuses, either as bonus gifts or hidden in levels of games," Harrison told US site GameSpot. "Certainly for the first-party titles we'll be making some of those available. We haven't really talked about whether we would sell them."

Crucially, Harrison added that third parties would be able to decide for themselves how they're going to release their old NES, Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 games, opening the door for publishers to charge for their old games.

Another leap for Revolution is its wireless networking abilities. Despite sitting out of the online gaming world until now, Nintendo seems ready to jump in, as exemplified by Revolution's out-the-box wireless support. Nintendo will not be charging a monthly fee for its service, but publishers are free to charge for the privilege of playing their games online.

This is essentially the same set-up currently employed by Sony and it is one Sony has decided to ditch for PlayStation 3 in favour of PlayStation World, a more Xbox Live-like service.

Reggie's mitts make the Game Boy Micro seem even smaller

But Revolution is not the only hardware in Nintendo's immediate future. Later this year the company will add to the Game Boy line with Game Boy Micro, a smaller version of the handheld that comes with a 2-inch front-lit LCD screen.

Harrison said that Game Boy Micro would be priced between Game Boy Advance SP and DS and also that Nintendo is considering bundling the handheld with Play-Yan, an add-on already available in Japan that allows for MP3 audio and MP4 video playback.

Nintendo isn't discussing launch plans for Revolution at the moment, but insiders guess that the console could be released at the end of 2006 in the US, with Japan following shortly thereafter and Europe only in early 2007.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games