Nintendo next gen rumours

[rabidrabbit]

There’s already been at least one dodgy “leak†before about the Revolution, but supposedly the same tipster who dished some reliable early dirt on the DS has also given up some details about Nintendo’s next-generation game console. Here’s what this guy is claiming:

* That Nintendo is building gyroscopes into the controllers, presumably to add some sort of motion-control aspect to games.
* The console will have dual processors and built-in broadband (we’re assuming Ethernet, but maybe also WiFi?).
* There are no plans to connect the DS to the Revolution, but there could be some integration with the Game Boy Evolution.
* The Revolution will have four controller ports, a hard drive, and support for high-resolution displays and Dolby Digital 5.1 channel surround sound.
* The console will be backwards-compatibility with GameCube games, and in what would only be a swipe at Sony, its drive will use HD-DVD, rather than Blu-ray, discs.
* The console will launch with a new Mario game (of course), and there is a new Zelda game in the works.
* There’s some teaser stuff at the end about how the truly “revolutionary†part of the new console is going to be something that “is nothing new technically speaking. It’s just something that hasn’t really been applied to video games before.†The tipster also claims that his source would only tell him that “touching is good but feeling is better.â€

We’re not even going to front that this stuff is all for real or not—we simply won’t know for sure until Nintendo unveils this thing at E3.

Found this from "Engadget", they got it from GA forums

Edit: Well, after I actually read what was said there, there was nothing very interesting or new. But hey, there isn't many threads about NIntendo's next gen consiole, at least I couldn't find any that was solely for Nintendo, there were plenty speculating MS+Nintendo etc, though

But the Gyration part sounds rather believable. I would bet that the controlles includes a motion sesing groscope, and that would actually be quite nice.
In GA forum someone said this

Gyroscopes and tilt sensor technology in the controller, eleminating the use of a 2nd analog stick for camera, the tilt sensor knows in which direction you tilt the controller and how far, but just "that" is confusing since the user has no clue as to where the "center" of the controller is, so you use gyroscopes to give a force feedback, the more you tilt the more the gyropscopes go in the opposite direction to give a slight feeling on your hand and know approximately where you have to tilt to go back on the center.

Force feedback done witha a gyroscope in a controller! I'd like that very much thank you!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

HD-DVD? Surely Ninty will go with a proprietary format like they always do?

 

[rabidrabbit]

An 8 cm HD-DVD disc

 

[cybamerc]

A combination of old info and logical deductions. Most are rather safe guesses. I don't think the Revolution will have a HDD however and I've never understood why people think M$ and Nintendo will go with HD-DVD just because Sony is involved with BRD. Quite frankly I don't think it makes much sense for either of them to get involved with this media format war. M$ will likely stick with DVD as per the leaked specs or use a proprietary format á la GameCube's optical discs and Nintendo will likely do the same.

 

[Guden Oden]

I'm a bit dubious about gyroscopes in the controller. They're high-precision instruments that typically spin at very high velocities and probably wouldn't take well to being banged about or dropped on the floor like people tend to do with controllers.

There are solid-state motion sensors today that could track movements easily but without the difficulties of mecanics. If you don't know how much or in which direction you got your joypad tilted in, you probably shouldn't be playing video games anyway.

Besides, a gyro doesn't give any force feedback when the device it sits in is tilted anyway; that's the whole point of a gyro... It's designed to sit in the same orientation always despite the way it's moved about.

Anyway, I'm not sure a motion sensor would be a good replacement for a second analog stick. People tend to move their hands with excitement during gameplay, sometimes we need to shift position etc - it would be no good if we screwed up an important jump in Mario4096 just because we had to straighten out our backs...

Motion sensing might have a place in some special applications, it's a gimmick like a touch-screen for a portable is. It's no good when used as a general solution to a problem however; it can't completely replace a joystick.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

A combination of old info and logical deductions. Most are rather safe guesses. I don't think the Revolution will have a HDD however and I've never understood why people think M$ and Nintendo will go with HD-DVD just because Sony is involved with BRD. Quite frankly I don't think it makes much sense for either of them to get involved with this media format war. M$ will likely stick with DVD as per the leaked specs or use a proprietary format á la GameCube's optical discs and Nintendo will likely do the same.

I agree 100%. HD optical formats simply aren't going to be a huge deal for the average consumer until at least 2007. By then the generation will be well underway.

 

[GwymWeepa]

Besides, a gyro doesn't give any force feedback when the device it sits in is tilted anyway; that's the whole point of a gyro... It's designed to sit in the same orientation always despite the way it's moved about.

If you keep a gyroscope anchored to something, then try moving it, it will offer resistance. For instance, if you take a bike wheel, hold it by the hub, spin it at a fast rate and then try to move it, it will offer resistance.

 

[Kaotik]

A combination of old info and logical deductions. Most are rather safe guesses. I don't think the Revolution will have a HDD however and I've never understood why people think M$ and Nintendo will go with HD-DVD just because Sony is involved with BRD. Quite frankly I don't think it makes much sense for either of them to get involved with this media format war. M$ will likely stick with DVD as per the leaked specs or use a proprietary format á la GameCube's optical discs and Nintendo will likely do the same.

MS for HD-DVD probably because WMV9 (HD) has been accepted for one of the standard compressions for it? (at least IIRC)

 

[Deepak]

HD-DVD? I don't think that would be the case as N has always said that they want to make a game console and not a jack-of-all-trades machine.

BTW, I think N seriously needs to think differently if they wish to do well next gen. They need to "Think Globaly and act locally". They should try and get as many 3rd parties on board as possible. They also need to shed its image as a "Japanese" company and should have a global outlook. They also need to remove the impression that they make only kiddy games. They should also give more space to 3rd party games bec'se they tend to focus too much on 1st/2nd party.

 

[Guden Oden]

If you keep a gyroscope anchored to something, then try moving it, it will offer resistance.

A: That's not a gyro though, just a spinning rotator. A gyro is a rotator mounted in an articulated frame. (Or grilled meat on a spit, hehee. Yuumm... *gets hungry*)
B: It will only offer resistance as long as you move it. It will not strain to get back to the original position as was claimed in the original post. It'd be really crappy force feedback at best.

 

[cybamerc]

Johnny Awesome:

> I agree 100%. HD optical formats simply aren't going to be a huge deal
> for the average consumer until at least 2007.

Certainly. But it can still be a selling point. Especially with PS3 having BRD playback. The problem is that you have two competing standards and unlike Sony neither M$ nor Nintendo have any vested interest in a particular media format. They stand to lose quite a lot if they bet on the wrong one.


Kaotik:

> MS for HD-DVD probably because WMV9 (HD) has been accepted for
> one of the standard compressions for it? (at least IIRC)

Who knows how that will play out in the end. And VC1 (WMV9) has also been proposed for use with BRD. I just don't see the point of a mostly software company losing potentially hundreds of dollars pushing an unproven media format.

 

[pc999]

Really would be nice some form of motion sensor, imagine something like FPS meet Virtua Cop here you control general movement in a classical way and aim by using the motion sensor ( controler ) as a gun.

 

[Squeak]

If you keep a gyroscope anchored to something, then try moving it, it will offer resistance.

A: That's not a gyro though, just a spinning rotator. A gyro is a rotator mounted in an articulated frame. (Or grilled meat on a spit, hehee. Yuumm... *gets hungry*)
B: It will only offer resistance as long as you move it. It will not strain to get back to the original position as was claimed in the original post. It'd be really crappy force feedback at best.

Let me just quote myself

I've thought about this long ago, and the main difficulty I see is the weight and size (and power consumption in a possible wireless pad) of the gyro, if it's going to exert any resistance worth speaking off on you hands.
But if Nintendo has found a solution to that problem, I don't think a mere spring replacement/alternative is enough to warrant the use of an expensive gyro. It only gets really interesting if the gyro also has two motors to tilt it independently from the controller. That would allow for REAL force feedback, so you could use the controller as a sort of VR glove. Think of Mario getting hit by something and you would be able to feel an actual real push at the controller, or he is getting dizzy and the controller tries to rotate around in you hands, to a casual gamer not knowing about gyros that would feel like pure magic, hell it would to me even!

You could even do with two motors only, one to spin the gyro and one to displace one half of it at the right moment. That way you could generate a continuous force.

 

[PC-Engine]

A console incorporating HD DVD does not equal "We will support HD DVD instead of BRD". It just means they picked an optical format that meets their storage, cost, etc. requirements. OTOH if you want HD movie playback in a console you have to make a choice between a HD DVD or BRD drive right from the start. Addons are not going to work unless you think adding a second optical drive to the existing one makes sense. A highend version of X console could incorporate HD movie playback, but then the games cannot benefit from the increased storage of the HD optical format.

 

[London Geezer]

Or a newcomer could come into the market, someone who doesn't really care about HDDVD and BDROM wars, and puts out a console that's compatible with both. And Betamax.

 

[Cryect]

You could even do with two motors only, one to spin the gyro and one to displace one half of it at the right moment. That way you could generate a continuous force.

I will just make note that to do the type of things being specified you really need more than one gyro (since each gyro can only restrict motion along one axis).

And really the idea of a gyro sounds a little scary to me in a cheap plastic controller where it could easily get potentially get off balance resulting next time its used and spinned up to 10k+ RPM's the weight breaks off and flys into little Johnny's head.

 

[GwymWeepa]

If you keep a gyroscope anchored to something, then try moving it, it will offer resistance.

A: That's not a gyro though, just a spinning rotator. A gyro is a rotator mounted in an articulated frame. (Or grilled meat on a spit, hehee. Yuumm... *gets hungry*)
B: It will only offer resistance as long as you move it. It will not strain to get back to the original position as was claimed in the original post. It'd be really crappy force feedback at best.

A: Now imagine that articulated frame could be moved, or not allowed to move by a motor...interesting force-feedback posibilities.

B: If there was a motor that knocked it back, that would be taken care of.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Curously, I'm hearing that ATI are involved with Nin on the design of the controller specifications!

 

[Farid]

Curously, I'm hearing that ATI are involved with Nin on the design of the controller specifications!

Unified buttons architecture? Temporal Full Pad Anti-Sweating? Analog shadow buffered stick?

Or a screen on the pad...

 

[Farid]

BTW, i think that Guden and cybamerc did actually sum it up quite nicely.
A pure gyroscopic sensor in the controler seems completly out of question, on the other hand a motion sensor might be include, in order to be used in some games (Minigames, here we are!) but not in all Revolutions games for the reasons previously stated by the other posters.

And about the Media chosen, then let just look at the Gamecube, it took forever to, somehow, pirate it. And, i must add that the solution for pirating GC games is neither easy nor trivial (from a layman perpective, that is). And seeing how little interests Nintendo has in thoses CE battles, I forsee a GC drive like.

There's also the Matsushita factor, since Matsushita provided the GC optical drive, one may suppose that they may also provide the Revolution optical drive, and since Matsushita is on the BR side, a Rev custom optical drive based on the BR technologie is not too far fetched.
Although, one could also argue that NEC is also a long time ally of Nintendo, and they could be the one providing the optical drive. It's also a possibility, that's true.

Nonetheless, i'll repeat myself, i know, i don't see Nintendo having a "plain vanilla" HD-DVD or BR drive on their machine as a priority, au contraire, i would more expect them to do the exact same thing they did this gen, choose a (good) custom optical drive.