To take away confusion
Many diffrent rumours have turned up lately with almost all of them fake or incomplete. I will make an exception in this post, with as purpose to take away confusion many fans seems to have now.
Metroid Prime 3
First of all, the so called "Metroid Prime 3" leaked pictures. Since it's fanmade and not related in any way with Nintendo's Metroid Prime 3 game I'd like to confirm to you it's fake, not real, so in other words, doesn't excist. Even thought I'm involved in any way with the development of Metroid Prime 3 or other Nintendo projects, I've seen a presentation running behind closed doors not even that long ago. The visuals I saw there are alot better than this. Now ofcourse you want me to give you an exemple of how good they did actually look. I'm not allowed to, so I can only tell you Metroid Prime 3 does have the visuals of a true Next-Gen game.
Gamecube-based development kits
Nintendo gave us many diffrent development kits to work with. We've received many upgrades on both hardware as development tools. Keep in mind however Revolution development is very similiar to Gamecube development. The first "real" development kits we've received from Nintendo actually was a Gamecube development kit with Revolution controller tools/support. That was however, more than one year ago and those development kits have been replaced many times already.
Now I've read IGN claimed to have heart from an annonymous studio current Revolution development kits are just slightly faster/better than the xbox hardware. This is funny, because this is both true and fake.
Why you ask?
Two months ago our studio aswell was still working with a Revolution development kit that had slightly more power than the current xbox. Less than a month ago however, we've again received upgraded development kits. Now I suspect ( no I'm actually positive ) this studio talked with IGN just before Nintendo handed over new development kits. It's also posible by the way, as I'm not sure how big this annonymous studio is, hasn't received the upgraded development kits as of yet. Mostly of the time the "big" studio's receive upgraded development kits a few weeks before the small ones do, because it's not a cheap job to replace development kits every time.
The most up to date working Revolution development kit has alot more power than the previous one. I can even confirm to you the newest development kits are the first development kits that includes prototypes of both Hollywood and Broadway. The previous versions didn't have those included.
Now if you look at the current specs of both Hollywood and Broadway ( which I will not provide to you, so do not ask ), we're not talking about a slightly upgraded xbox, but pretty powerfull hardware. Revolution's power is not underpowered compared to xbox 360. I can't speak for Playstation 3, because I've no acces so any stuff involved to Playstation 3 development.
However, Xbox 360 has more power than Revolution, but Revolution isn't underpowered.
But I suppose you all remember what Mr.Iwata said at e3 2004. "The time when horsepowers made the diffrence is over". Hollywood and Broadway are so well designed and have such incredible libary of techniques and tools ( and I'm currently talking about prototypes, so who knows what will happen in the final development kits ), which approves Mr.Iwata's statement. Development for Revolution is easy and cheap compared to compitors consoles.
I do however understand why Nintendo will probably never release the specs about Revolution. If you know the specs you will become so confused, because you would think there's no posibility Revolution is able to perform visuals of the level you will see with the given specs. Reality if diffrent and Nintendo made it posible.
Cheap development costs, easy development, cheap hardware, low consumer price, very high performance and even be able to make money out of it.
Launch Date
I do nothing about the provided Thanks Giving launch date in America. Now even thought we're an European located company we do plan a American release. So this is even new news to me. I will take contact with Nintendo later this week to get this straight, because it would be very annoying to receive a "deadline" throught the media.
HD Support
Well since Nintendo confirmed it already, it's not really a surprise. Nintendo Revolution will not feature HD Support, and there fore we do not have development kits providing this feature. Does it matter? In my personal opinion it doesn't because what Nintendo will offer to compensate HD is even better than HD. The third revolutionary aspect, will be the feature which will provide you the replacement for HD as I've said before.
Ubisoft Readies Shooter
An unnamed title? Cool, let's guess the name!
Bottomline
You don't have to worry about all the rumours. Most of them are fake. Leaked ingame pictures from a Nintendo game? Common, there isn't any company better secured than Nintendo. There's a bigger chance you will see the first "leaked" Revolution screenshots from a third party game, if there will be a real leak in the future that is.
I hope this will be the only and last time I needed to provide a news post which isn't the purpose of this blog. However if there will be such "breaking fake news" in the future which I can confirm fake Ill probably do that, with as purpose to stop fake annoying hype. Don't expect me to do if often by the way.
You know the purpose of this blog. Discussing gameplay idea's for No End Soon. The meeting where we're going to discuss some of the idea's you people gave us will be coming thurseday. So ill update you on how it went thureday evening or friday morning.