Nintendo's quiet Revolution

We love Nintendo, we really do. The Wind Waker made us cry like babies, Mario Kart Double Dash is still the office multiplayer game of choice and hell, we'll even play Pokemon if nobody's watching. But with Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 pulling out all the stops for the next-gen console war, Nintendo's E3 showing was a big disappointment.

With its new Revolution console, it showed off nothing more than pictures of the hardware, which it said were subject to change, with no games, no controller pics and no release date to back it up. While the idea was probably to tease people with a glimpse at the console, it seemed rather meagre after the show-all tactics of Microsoft and Sony.

So what do we know about the new console for sure? Well, it will have access to the entire Nintendo back catalogue, able to play all the past hits on all the consoles from NES to GameCube. How these are going to be distibuted isn't known, but our bet is online, with games saved onto an SD memory card. It's a brave and risky strategy, even though Nintendo is still the best games developer in the world. It simply hasn't offered the kind of mature content that's won Sony and Microsoft so many supporters, and it remains to be seen whether this 'backwards' approach will play to a modern audience. We'd rather being playing Halo 3, thanks.

Nintendo confirmed that the Revolution will feature built-in WiFi and USB ports, and will take both full-size DVDs and GameCube discs. Also expect Nintendo DS functionality to feature quite heavily, but with more announcements to be made at next year's E3, don't expect the console to be released for at least another year. -GC

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