Revolution Comes Cheap, Looks Beautiful

While Microsoft and Sony focus on the big-spenders, Nintendo stays true to its goal of bringing in as many people as possible.

Nintendo may be withdrawing from making standard games like its console rivals, but it still has to go up against them for your gaming pounds, dollars and yen. To make its next-gen console, Revolution (not the final name), more attractive to you and gamers the world over, Nintendo is aiming to again bring its hardware in at a lower price.

"Value has been a key card for us this generation and we'll continue to play it," Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Aime told CNN this week. "Do I expect us to be at a lower price point than our competition? Yes I do. Have we determined a price yet? No we haven't."

Not only that. Nintendo has learned from the design mistakes made with the GameCube. While the boxy, purple (or black) console did well with kids, the family friendly design gave the console a toy-like appearance, especially when compared to the sleek lines of the PlayStation and the brawny Xbox.

Fils-Aime concedes that aesthetics go hand in hand with solid games, especially in the console's early days:

"I think there were some lessons we learned with the GameCube that we need to apply to the Revolution."

"First, we've got make sure that the titles in the first six months are strong and can drive sales. We've also got to make sure the console is attractive visually. And we've got to deliver on the right consumer needs. With GameCube, at the time, portability was thought to be a big factor - that's why it has a handle. Obviously, that wasn't the case."

Nintendo's current bellwether console is the DS, which is doing well thanks to excellent games, in spite of its clunky appearance. Here too the company is going to neaten things up a bit, with Fils-Amie hinting to CNN that a redesign was already being worked on.

"As soon as [the DS] was launched, we started looking at ways to tweak it visually," he said.

The revelations weren't all good, though. With high definition TVs going into more and more homes now, there's pressure on companies to deliver HD content. Sony and Microsoft are already using HD resolutions as standard in their games, but Nintendo seems it will lag behind.

Fils-Aime insists, though, that when you sit down to play a Revolution game, you'll forget all about HD.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games