Revolution Details
 

Sleek system to play standard DVDs, says Nintendo. More inside.

May 12, 2005 - The Electronics Entertainment Expo 2005 is still days away, but that hasn't stopped Microsoft from debuting its Xbox 360 console on MTV. And now Nintendo has followed suit, revealing some new meaty details about its next-generation console, codenamed Revolution.

Nintendo of America's vice president of corporate affairs Perrin Kaplan describes the console as "very, very sleek." The system, which is reportedly tiny, will stand horizontally. Its width will reportedly be no more than three DVD cases stacked flatly on each other, or slightly more than an inch.

Revolution will play standard DVD media this time around. No word yet if the console will be able to play DVD movies.

It will also be able to play high-definition games and go online.

More details to come at E3 2005. Stay tuned.

Re: Revolution Details
 

Whoa. Standard DVDs, hi-definition games, and online? Welcome to 2001 Nintendo. :mad:

And that quote from Perrin Kaplan must have been the most amount of information she's ever given out ever. Perrin Kaplan can go jump into a river full of radioactive guppies for all I care. Actually if Reggie revealed this I'd probably be excited. I have such fiery disdain for Perrin.

It be tiny though. Always a plus.

Re: Revolution Details
 

Tiny is good. So is sleek.

Re: Revolution Details
 

So is DVD, so is HD, so is online. But like Danny said, that's only playing catchup.

Re: Revolution Details
 

catch up to xbox 360?? they are saving big $$ by doing this dvd format is juuuuuuuust fine

blu-ray is overkill....

Re: Revolution Details
 

No, catchup to the original Xbox.

You can use DVD-9, which holds 8.54GB. Or, if you want to use the current HD-DVD disc as an example, you could have a disc that could be 15, 30, or 45GB depending on how many layers you have. Is that too overkill?

On top of that, it's not like HD-DVD is forced upon anyone. The entire point is having the disc backwards-compatible, which means if Revolution opted for an HD-DVD drive, they could put games on a single or double layered DVD, DVD9, or single or double or triple layered HD-DVD. Have as much room for expansion as they need, and only pay for what you need.

But then again, this is supposed to be the HD-Era. DVDs helped sell PS2 and Xbox, why not have HD-DVD playback sell Revolution? I don't have a 1080p TV, I would if I wasn't in the Corps but that's another story. Point is, I'll have one at some point during the 5 year lifespan of the new consoles, and personally, I'd like to take advantage of native 1080p and not just upconversion. By including HD-DVD playback in a console, it would actually get HD-DVD to people who don't have it, unlike at the time when PS2 was released, when DVD was already fairly popular in America.

1920x1080 takes up a ton of space to store. A simple movie trailer is almost 200MB in size. Figure all the cut scenes in an RPG, plus all the rest of the content. DVD9 ain't going to cut it, and it shows.

Just look at Xbox 360, HD-era this, HD-era that, and guess what? 720p for games. It supports 1080i, but the standard is 720p. Could space requirements have something to do with it? I don't know the answer, but it's a possibility.

Re: Revolution Details
 

I agree and disagree. I think Nintendo should definitely invest in a high density medium. However, the arguement about high def cutscenes is slowly going to become obsolete because the real-time cut-scene abilities of a console will be extremely high. The gap between in game and real-time cutscenes gets bigger with every generation. So unelss high def video is used (i.e. a Star Wars game that uses footage), it's really going to be unnecessary.

But, as Nintendo's older consoles have shown, a bigger medium is definitely a source of bigger support. Square says they'd like to support Nintendo this time around. Well, they said the same thing before the N64 came out, showing a 3d version of FFVI on the N64 dev units. And the day they found out the system would use cartridges, Square formatted the HD on that puppy and sent it packing back to Nintendo.

So I see the arguement. I just think that eventually there will be methods of negating it.

Re: Revolution Details
 

Is there actually anything that makes it impossible for the Revolution to use dual-layered DVDs? Most any DVD player out there can play dual-layered discs nowadays. And you can tell whether a DVD is dual-layered by a brief pause in the middle of the movie. The Revolution may play "standard" DVDs, but I can't imagine that dual-layered ones will be impossible. And if that's the case, then the Revolution has just as much capacity as the Xbox 360.

Re: Revolution Details
 

No, as a matter of fact if it's capable of playing DVD movies it has to be capable of dual-layering because many movies use them. In terms of DVD storage, the Xbox 360 has nothing on the Revolution right now.

Re: Revolution Details
 

What does it mean to stand horizontal? It either stands vertical or lays horizontal.

Re: Revolution Details
 

Oh neo, you so silly,!!!
*helps neo to the corner to sit in his "thinking chair" again*


It's all gonna be alright neo.. it's all going to be alright!!

Re: Revolution Details
 

Nope.

My first port was partially incorrect. DVD9 is a dual-layered DVD. I always mistook it for a larger 1-layer format, but it is the traditional single-side, dual-layer disc.

DVD9 is also what Xbox used, exclusively. Don't know if they ever used more than one layer, but they didn't use single-layered discs because those were (back then) the only ones consumers could burn.

Revolution, Xbox, Xbox 360, and I believe even PS2 all are on the same disc now.

Question is, who is willing to take it to the next step? Most likely, Sony. But fearing Microsoft Sony announced that a 2005 release is still possible.

My guess is, no one. HD-DVD won't be ready in time for them to add it to the consoles.

Brings me back to my old theory, these console are being rushed out a year early, and because of that, we'll be stuck with junk until 2011.


EDIT: Journalists need to be fired. Even IGN can't do it right. I knew standard DVDs didn't look right, so I looked it up. I was right. Never said a thing about standard DVDs, never ruled out HD-DVD.

Didn't say whether it would play movie or games off DVDs, didn't say whether they were DVD or HD-DVD.

I think IGN just got rather embarrassed that they have to take the first few Revolution details from a NY Times article, and they didn't get it themselves. So in an attempt to add something to a simple statement, they started re-writing it, and made assumptions.

This is the worst journalism I've seen come out of Matt Casamassina in a long time.

Read the real article yourself.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/13/te...gin&oref=login

Re: Revolution Details
 

Well it looks like Revolution games will be on dual-layered DVDs as it comes straight from the horse's mouth.

Here's the rest of the article...

http://www.nintendo.com/newsarticle?...4139&page=home

Re: Revolution Details
 

NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

Now Nintendo can join the list of mistakes made this generation. And I assume self-loading means tray, because I'd like to see a slot-loading drive accept both full-size and 8cm discs.

NOOOOOOO!!! :(

One year too early...

Re: Revolution Details
 

I might be missing something.. or completely honestly don't give a damn but what is this big hang up with HD-DVDs?