Revolution May Have Twenty Launch Titles
April 8, 2006 at 14:39 PDT – Source: Game Informer Magazine
NOA exec George Harrison says a third of them could be from Nintendo itself.
In an interview in the May issue of Game Informer (yes, the same one with the Red Steel exclusive), George Harrison talks about the Revolution in greater detail than ever before. Harrison is Senior Vice President, Marketing and Corporate Communications at Nintendo of America.
Harrison admits that the Revolution is targeted at the Japanese market first and foremost, where the video game industry has been in a steady decline for years (at least until the booming success of the Nintendo DS). However, the company is aiming to launch the Revolution worldwide in 2006. He also reiterates that the system will cost less than Xbox 360, similar to comments from Reggie Fils-Aime last year. As for software prices, he says the standard game price will be $50, though some games could cost $60. (It is not clear whether this statement would apply to all Revolution software or only Nintendo's own games.)
Harrison admits that Nintendo has learned many lessons from the success of the PlayStation 2. They now understand that the system with the greatest variety of software does not need technical superiority. They have also learned that it's important to keep software flowing throughout the first year on the market, as opposed to what happened with GameCube and DS (big launches and then several months with few or no games released). The marketing challenges for Revolution are similar to the challenges Nintendo faced when marketing the Virtual Boy in the 90s.
Finally, Harrison predicts that the Revolution could launch later this year with as many as twenty launch titles, although Nintendo is still not sure which third-party games will be ready for that timeframe. Of that number, he says one-third (six to seven titles) could be from Nintendo itself. This would easily be the largest number of Nintendo-published launch titles in the history of Nintendo's hardware releases.
For the full interview, be sure to pick up the May issue of Game Informer magazine.
Thanks to reader PhoenixDark for the tip!
Jonathan Metts, Contributing Editor
