Revolution specifications may never see the light of day

Wii News | 'Irrelevant,' says Jim Merrick.

The good folks at Eurogamer are reporting that Jim Merrick, senior director of marketing for Nintendo Europe, has recently dropped a bombshell in an interview with Dutch magazine [N]Gamer, claiming that, "Regarding the specifications [of Revolution], we will probably never 'release' this information as we feel that it is largely irrelevant."

Merrick took it one step further too, taking the obligatory jab at Sony and Microsoft: "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." Ouch. "I know people are hungry for information on Revolution and we respect and appreciate that, but we don't want to contribute to the cloud of meaningless information that surrounds the next generation systems."

But that wasn't all. Merrick assured the magazine that the next generation's big titles - Mario, Zelda, Metroid and Smash Brothers - were all working their way down development road quite nicely. He also reaffirmed that not all Revolution titles would use the remote control of doom, either, with the 'expansion controller' (conventional controller, for you kids playing at home) playing a pivotal role in many games.

"This option is there for new games that will be created that are most suited to a traditional style of controller. We are not trying to say that the ‘traditional’ controller design is not valid, in fact Nintendo is responsible for most of the features that are found on today’s traditional controllers," he stated.

Wrapping up the discussion, Merrick threw in a final tidbit - Revolution will use game-sharing technology akin to the DS, meaning that not all players will have to have a copy of the game to play it online. Handy.

More Revolution news as it trickles out of Kyoto.

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9 Comments

realitybites

6 years ago

Nintendo should be commended for staying out of the "cat fights" on hardware specs but for professional marketing camps like Sony and MS this is easy pickings.

Its far easy to create FUD when there is no concrete evidence and/or fact. People cannot ground themselves with reality when its left to the imagination.

Having just looked at a video of a golf game on the DS its good to see Ninty and third parties utilising the different input techniques to maximise the game experience. If this translates well to the Rev controller I think discerning gamers will be in for a real treat.

Capoeira

6 years ago

Fair enough. Hmm, I wonder how the rival fanboys are going to take to that. Let's just let the screens speak for themselves. I pretty relieved that not all games will utilize the 'remote of doom'. There are some popular games that I just can't see working on that. Good to see Nintendo is keeping their bases covered. It's actually pretty refreshing to see Nintendo finally letting the world in on what the Revolution is all about, even if it is pretty minimal. I've got to say their mystery campaign is more effective than Microsoft's information overload and Sony's fakes. The Revolution is the one console that I am genuinely intrigued with and this slow release of info is just enough to keep me hooked.

Kaygen

6 years ago

I'm an avid fanboy. I own every single Nintendo Console to date, including the virtual boy and 64DD.

With this news, i am definately happy. Specs on paper mean ****. You can compare consoles in the past if you wish, say, PS2 and Dreamcast, on paper the PS2 had better specs,. but it was/is fkn hard to make games for with lots of bottlenecks. The Dreamcast obviously wasnt (running Windows CE might of helped). Some DC games look alot better (dead or alive 2) then on PS2.

Nintendo are really sticking to their philosphy. They have already stated that the specs of the REV aren't as high as the PS3 or Xbox360. So if they were to release them alot of people would compare and think "oh man its going to be **** look at those specs compared to the others, yuk". Quite frankly, they dont want you to get excited about specs, but rather the games.

Honestly, if you were given 2 choices, to either see the specs written up in a statement or to see media of actual in-game screens of rev. WHich would it be?

Media obviously....

We dont care about specs, why should we? Aslong as the games look good and are fun....

ZNMS

6 years ago

Fair enough, but come on, just release information. Just for fun.

DancesInUnderwear

6 years ago

I don't even know what any of the specs mean and how they compare, nor do I give a damn. So this is fine with me.

And I like how he mentions that not every game will use the remote, as I was really thinking that every single 1st party game would. Nintendo could probably have made the remote work for those things, but at least they realise that they don't HAVE to.

NismoR34

6 years ago

I just had a random though which I thought I would mention. What happens if Nintendo (and indeed other companies in the future) make a game's lastability longer by providing two entirely different gaming experiences with the one game. IE: one with a conventional controller and one with the 'baton'. Would certainly prove interesting, although I'm probably talking crap so please do ignore me.

I have personally never understood all the spec rubbish, so I'm glad I don't have to bother trying to read and understand what the Revolution will have. I don't care what it has, it's what it does that is my concern. Good to hear.

döppelgangbang

6 years ago

So I guess we can rule out the console finally being named the

Nintendo 256 (or pick your own number)

mjk45

6 years ago

if nintendo's,revolution specifications killed the other consoles you can bet we would know all about it .
when its released it wont take long to know the specs so why not now
all consoles will have great, good and bad games so specs can make a difference sounds like a smoke screen.

David

6 years ago

mjk45 wrote

The official PS2 specs (polygon count wise) said the PS2 was four times more powerful then the Gamecube. People still claim the Gamecube is less powerful today based on those specs. So no specs are better then real specs. That can say what chip it is etc, but if we never get performance estimates, that's probably a good idea, unless they want to start lying like the others.

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