Topic: More Revolution Tidbits

[RickPowers]

Update: Nintendo clarifies some of the language on its website.

Update: Nintendo has revised some of the text in their website post, removing the reference to "standard double-layered DVD discs", and replacing it with the following.    

"Nintendo's legions of loyal fans will be happy to learn that Revolution will be backward compatible, playing both Nintendo GameCube 8cm disks along with its own 12cm optical disks in the same self-loading media drive."    

At this point, we don't know why the change was made, but it could unfortunately be due to the confusion as to whether or not Revolution will be able to play DVD Movies as well as games.  GameCube's GD-ROM discs are based on DVD technology, but with key anti-piracy features and other differences.  It now seems that the Revolution media will have more in common with the GameCube discs than the "standard" DVD media.    

The original quotes from the website are below ...    

   

Nintendo updated their website this morning with a few more details, building off of Perrin Kaplan's statements to The New York Times from yesterday.    

"In its final form, Revolution will be about the thickness of three standard DVD cases and only slightly longer. The versatile Revolution will play either horizontally or vertically, allowing the user total flexibility in setting up a gaming session wherever they have a television."    

"Thanks to Nintendo's hardware development partners IBM and ATI, the small system will be packed with power that will enable it to wow players with its graphics. Nintendo's legions of loyal fans will be happy to learn that Revolution will be backward compatible, playing both Nintendo GameCube 3-inch disks along with its own standard, double-layered DVD disks in the same self-loading media drive."    

Nintendo goes on to off-handedly mention quick start-up times, quiet and low-power operation, and of course, wireless internet included.    

Four days left ...

[RickPowers]

So no HD-DVD, but double-layered DVD (also called DVD9, because they can hold just about 9GB) instead, again showing parity with Xbox 360. I do wonder about this choice, but apparently Sony is willing to throw money at maintaining a dominance position, since it is still expected that they will be using the Blu-Ray disc technology, capable of storing up to 50GB (likely only 25GB at launch). However, 9GB should be more than adequate for most games, few games today truly max out even a single-layer DVD.

It is the last statement that truly interests me, however. "Self-loading media drive" sounds a lot like a slot-loading drive, similar to the Apple Mac Mini and Powerbook. How could they do that with the smaller GameCube discs? I guess we'll find out in just a few days.

I'm still not sure why everyone is getting on the vertical tower bandwagon Sony started. I use an AV cabinet, so it's far more convenient to keep my consoles horizontal, but to each his (or her) own.  

[Pale]

Don't the self loading drives in mac-mini's etc already support the miniature cds?  I thought they did....hmm

[RickPowers]

Could be, I'm not totally familiar with it.

[Talon]

Damn, with matsushita backing blu-ray I was hoping they would influence Nintendo to go with blu-ray.  I suppose though it would really push the price of the revolution up considering you still cant buy a blu-ray player. Oh well, if nintendo is releasing revolution in 2006 the price of a blu-ray drive might be cheap enough for them to change it.

[Bill Aurion]

"Nintendo goes on to off-handedly mention quick start-up times, quiet and low-power operation, and of course, wireless internet included."



(And I SERIOUSLY doubt Ninty would ever consider going with a competitor's media...That's absurd...)

[The Omen]

Quote
Damn, with matsushita backing blu-ray I was hoping they would influence Nintendo to go with blu-ray. I suppose though it would really push the price of the revolution up considering you still cant buy a blu-ray player. Oh well, if nintendo is releasing revolution in 2006 the price of a blu-ray drive might be cheap enough for them to change it.

-------------------------

Oh for God sake!  Listen up!  Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are one in the same now.  Toshiba and Sony have combined both together and the final specs will be released within the next month.  

[hudsonhawk]

Quote
Oh for God sake!  Listen up!  Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are one in the same now.  Toshiba and Sony have combined both together and the final specs will be released within the next month.

Though that's looking likely to happen, Toshiba has been downplaying those reports.

But the fact is, this is probably similar to Microsoft's decision to make the DVD player optional on the original Xbox - neither Nintendo nor MS want to be paying their cheif competitor royalties on every single console sale.

[Famicom]

Toshiba's own press release from 3 days ago confrims there are/were talks, but denies anything is set in stone. So don't jump on that unification bandwagon yet.

[lastexit]

Not a chance in hell that Nintendo would pay Sony licensing fees for Blu-Ray.  Even if they "merge" the technologies they'll both be getting a license fee which will probably go up, hence the upside for toshiba/sony to do it.

With regular dvd it made less difference but i'm thinking that if I get an hd tv i'm going to want a high-quality hd-dvd player that's really designed for that purpose rather than shoe-horned into a console.

[anubis6789]

When I read about the drive in the Mac Mini it said only normal sized disk can go into the disc drive. I would give you a link but I don't remember were I saw it. I think it was at apples own site so go snoop around there and you will probably find it.

I was still hoping they were going to use a flip-top style, I preffer those. I just hope they keep the power supply sepperate from the system again like every other system they have ever made. In my opinion most of the problems in consoles come from the fact that the power supply is right next to everything else, causing over heating.

Techniclly DVD is made by a competitor and they are going to use that so why not Blu-ray. I mean isn't that one of the reasons Nintendo has a strong partnership with Matsushita/Panasonic, so that they can use these new technologies.

[bubicus]

Hmmmm.... slightly longer than a DVD case.......... the proportions would be close to a 16:9 widescreen, wouldn't it? Could there be a portable LCD screen in the near future so we can watch DVDs on the go with the Revolution or take it anywhere for gaming?

 

[KirbySStar]

anubis, if they wish to keep the system small then they will keep the power supply separate like the did with the cube.  It's only logical.  Plus, it's a safety precaution.

I am very excited with this news.  E3 is looking better now since it appears Nintendo was waiting for Microsoft to make announcements first.

[Artimus]

The self-loading really does sound nice, it's one of the nice features of the Mac laptops and Mini. But wow, that system is small! Could MS be the big system once again? Not that it matters

This is odd though because they know a lot more finalized details than they let on. Four days indeed

[Bill Aurion]

Quote
Originally posted by: bubicus
Hmmmm.... slightly longer than a DVD case.......... could there be a portable LCD screen in the near future so we can watch DVDs on the go with the Revolution or take it anywhere for gaming?

Very likely, in my opinion...Ninty was showing off that beautiful LCD GC screen a while back, so if they see a market for it we could easily see a Rev version in the future...

[mantidor]

I still wonder why a dev would need 25 GB media... to fill it with cutscenes perhaps? because thats all I could think about.

[anubis6789]

Mantidor, developers could use that extra space to add much more then just cutscenes like voice overs, and horrible liscensed music, you know everything that most Nintendo gamers hate(or maybe just me), because God forbid you actually add more game related content.

Wow, as each day passes the more jaded I become.

Kirby, thanks for quelling my fear, your probably right.

[Ian Sane]

Dual layered DVDs hold 9 GB. That's pretty huge for a game.  I think Xenosaga uses that much space but nothing else I can think of does and that's loaded with FMV.  And it's not hard to go to two discs for 18 GB.  If they really want 25 then they can use three discs and have 27.  There were PSX games that were on four discs.  It's not weird to go with multiple discs and the odds of ever needing that are like never.

I imagine blu-ray discs cost more money to make.  So devs on the PS3 will have to pay extra for space they most of the time won't need.  It's a waste.  The drive would likely drive the console price up as well.  Do you want to pay more money to play games that are less than 9 GB stored on 25 GB discs?

CDs quickly proved to be too small since there were so many multi-disc games on the Playstation so at the time it was clear that something bigger was needed for the next generation.  There aren't a bunch of double DVD games showing that the current format is too small so there's less justification for switching to something else.  Even two disc Cube games were pretty rare so even 1.5 GB was enough for most games.  9 GB is plenty.  In fact for most games it's a little excessive.

[couchmonkey]

I think 9GBs is plenty too, but there's always a way to use that space.
Take Ubisoft.  Prince of Persia had all languages on one disc, which explains why the GameCube version had such horrible sound quality.  Maybe this will be less of a problem than in the last two generations, but I see this potentially becoming a small advantage for Sony.  It's iffy.  Since MS is going DVD9 too, Nintendo isn't putting itself in a really bad position.  Sony will be the only one ahead, and devs will probably design less with 25 GB in mind and more with 9.

[Ian Sane]

"Sony will be the only one ahead, and devs will probably design less with 25 GB in mind and more with 9."

This gen a lot of multiplatform games were designed with the weakest hardware in mind (ie: PS2) so that porting would be easy.  So if this trend continues then the Xbox 360 would be the "default" hardware for multiplatform games.  EA for example isn't going to design Madden to use 25 GB because they want to port it to every system imaginable so they'll go with 9 GB as the max.

[BigJim]

As mentioned in the other thread before it died, I think it's likely that actual game discs will still be proprietary in some way, like using some of the same methods from the Gamecube discs.

But I do wonder exactly how powerful the system is if it's light on power consumption, and so small. Top of the line graphic cards are monster heat machines. Perhaps they're borrowing tech from the portable line of cards... or maybe "low-powered" is just relative.

I also still wonder about the hybrid idea... a battery and display accessory seems even more probable.

[Fro]

I think the big thing we're missing here is that the console is likely going to be portable to some extent.  The very small size and low power usage is a dead giveaway.  The console is going to be easy to carry around and probably half the size of a laptop.

A battery pack would be very small and would give the console a good 4-5 hours of life even with using wifi and DVDs.

What I'm imaging is the controllers having a headphone jack and a good-quality LCD screen that slides/flips out, and then using the wifi to stream the visuals/audio of the game to the controller.

You'd then have a portable media/gaming center.  Take it in the car and play DVDs, mp3s, CDs.  Play games.  Plug it into an ethernet port or stick it near a wifi hub and you're online on your controller!  

The PSP would be obsolete.

Why else would they skimp on power for size?

[Bill Aurion]

Skimping on power for size?  More like something called "efficiency"...

[tForce]

Ian...

Not true.   Sega (at least in the case of the sports games) design for the stronger system first(XBox), and then take things out for the weaker one (PS2).  Still, I don't see this being an issue for newer games.

I could see the extra room being used for uncompressed PNG textures.  While this can lead to sharper graphics, it would also consume much more bandwidth.  Plus, it wouldn't be that much of an improvement... as texture compression algorithms are so advanced already.  Plus, anyone that's seen that 9kb DX9 demo program knows its entirely possible to make a VERY good looking game with practically no space taken.

I'm very curious as to what features the Revolution will have that seperates it from the Xbox360.  Nintendo can't just meet Microsoft spec for spec, or even just try to feature a little more RAM or horsepower.  It needs a STRONG gimmick... much like Microsoft had XBOX Live.

I find it funny that all the MS fanboys who deplored the Gamecube as looking like a kid's toy are wetting themselves over the XBox360.  Frankly, that thing looks more kid-like than the GameCube... ESPECIALLY that controller.    (what the hell is tiku tiku tiku! inserted for the k word? =p)

[Ian Sane]

"What I'm imaging is the controllers having a headphone jack and a good-quality LCD screen that slides/flips out"

The cost of that would be insane so I doubt they would do it.  I do think however that Nintendo might make an LCD screen for the console itself as an accessory.  We already know this think can attach to PC monitors.  The idea might be "if there's a screen you can play Revolution".  This is still too big to be a portable like the GBA or DS but it could make for something in between like the console equivalent of a laptop.  It's still a console but it's small enough to bring to your friends house for LAN parties and with the optional screen you can take it anywhere.

Having the LCD as an accessory would be ideal because otherwise it would drive up the costs and people can choose to just use their own TV anyway.  And since every game would automatically be playable with it the screen wouldn't have the install base problems that most accessories have.

"Bring your console anywhere" is pretty revolutionary and it fits the "not just tethered to a television" idea.