Jim Merrick Talks
Laptop Battery Nintendo of Europe's Senior Vice President Jim Merrick recently spoke with Eurogamer. In the interview, Merrick discussed Nintendo's Wi-Fi initiative as well as Revolution, the next home console from Nintendo.
On the subject of online, Merrick addressed why Nintendo has been late coming to the online gaming market: "We've been on the sidelines of online gaming for a long time - we just didn't see the right combination of value for the consumer and technology and gameplay... Now I think the time is right. We talked about the promise of Wi-Fi when we first introduced DS and now we can show you, with Mario Kart and with Tony Hawk, what Nintendo's vision of online gaming is."
Merrick also confirmed that Revolution will use the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, but that it will have "a lot of different requirements and capabilities." In addition, he confirmed that the 512 MB of flash memory that Revolution has will be expandable, and that there will be no adapter needed to play GameCube games. "It's actually one of the unique elements of the system - there's never been a slot-based disc drive that can handle two different formats. It's one of the neat pieces of technology nobody seems to pick up on," Merrick said.
Merrick said that while piracy and emulation can allow people to play retro titles on the PC, that the mass market will look at the ability to download retro titles for just a couple pounds (less than US$4) and embrace the idea. He also said that the games don't play as well on the PC as they do on a console. Merrick also mentioned the possibility for downloadable demos or movies, and how it could be possible to have demos expire after a certain time using controversial digital rights management technologies. Merrick made it clear, however, that Nintendo won't be aiming for a "multimedia hub," and will concede that opportunity over to the competition.
In the interview Merrick implied that Revolution will be at E3 2006. He also stated that Nintendo is going to try to have Revolution out accross the globe in a shorter time period than the 14 weeks it took them to release the Nintendo DS.
Merrick also took on Epic Games' Mark Rein, who stated that Nintendo's controller for Revolution is going to be one of the "the most crappy, cheap, I-wish-I-hadn't-bought-it gimmicks ever" and stated that next-generation games will be "all about the graphics." Merrick said, "Mark has a very narrow section of the business. Epic builds middleware, they're very technically savvy guys, but he doesn't have a Revolution controller, he doesn't have a dev kit, he's talking about something he knows nothing about." Merrick also went on to say, "So if he'd like to get a dev kit and really dig into it, then I'd be interested to hear what he has to say."
You can read the full interview here.
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