Nintendo ON Speculation Continues

KingofGamers chat with ATI

ATI is the developer of the Visual Processing Unit (VPU) inside both the Xbox 360 and the super-secret Nintendo Revolution. Here are excerpts from an interview with 'JI' at ATI by 'KingofGamers':

King-Can you elaborate on how the VPU for the Revolution will compare to that of the Xbox 360?

JI- Both graphics cards will be state of the art. However ultimately they will be very different and serve two different purposes. The Xbox 360 is designed for multiplayer games and Microsoft wanted a console to continue on the same trend of the current consoles but wanted to add a significant graphical enhancement. Visually the Xbox 360 will be spectacular.

The Revolution on the other hand is going into unchartered territory. Into a new untapped world of gaming. It to will be graphically amazing however in a different way. It will be amazing in terms of immersiveness. You see it is not that easy to compare them. In fact it is like comparing apples and oranges. On one side you have the Xbox 360 which caters to the traditional style of gaming and then you have the Revolution that is going into a territory that quite frankly in new,exciting, and also scary.

King- Do you feel that third parties may not be signing on the Revolution because of this new Paradigm, if you will?

JI- I think so. Not all Third Parties are equipped to handle the undertaking that Nintendo is going after. Some may be taking a wait and see approach. If you remember Nintendo had to hold the hands and show third parties how to develop 3D games when the Nintendo 64 was released(Super Mario 64). I think you are going to see that again. Nintendo is going to have to show third parties how to do this.

King- Closing Comments?

JI- King I would like to tell gamers around the world that both the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Revolution will be amazing systems. They will be powerful and fun. I would like to keep this nonpartial and say if you are looking for traditional gaming and multiplayer action then the Xbox 360 will surely deliver for you. If you are looking for state of the art Immersiveness then the Revolution will bring you to the next level and what I believe is the future of gaming. In terms of graphics you need not worry both systems will deliver unparalleled graphics just in different ways.

King- Well JI I have kept you long enough. I thank you for your time and look forward to the Revolution.

JI- Your welcome.

To throw a little more fuel on the 'Nintendo ON' fire, here's a post from a single-post blog by someone claiming to work for Nintendo:

Nintendo ON, 3D displays, mystery controller and lot's of absurd posts. Time for change

welcome to my blog

I won’t give out my name as that would be a very stupid thing to do but I will say that I work for Nintendo of Japan. Please excuse my English and bad grammar. English is a third language to me, I have been working for Nintendo for many years and I am sorry that I cannot offer anything to prove this. I do not want to lose my job, as working for Nintendo is a real joy. We continue to think up on very interesting and innovating ideas to bring to the consumer.

But I am not very happy by what we at Nintendo are doing, I have nothing to do with the viral marketing, I really think it’s a shame that Nintendo a great gaming company have sunk too low to these marketing methods as it brings up a lot of unnecessary hype to the fans out there, your all probably going nuts wanting Nintendo next gen news but get fed a load of nonsense.

Since E3 Nintendo have been bombarding you the fans with many clues, I have read some posts across the net and I really feel for you all. You are getting very annoyed and I know that. Somebody says this and another says that and you simply don’t know who to believe anymore.

Well I am writing all this now rather than earlier as a means to tell you the truth bit by bit. I know now it's better to come forward and reveal the truth rather than let’s say two months ago. This is because back then we had shown our revolutionary system to only a selected few and so I was not able to come out and tell you details on our system as straight away Nintendo would know who was behind the leak. Well even though we all have signed NDA's and now that Nintendo has demonstrated the controller and system details to developers at a secret showing, it is now safe for me to tell you the truth on this secret console without losing my job. As Nintendo aren’t going to know who out of all the people at the showing leaked it, as it could be one in a few hundred people.

I am going to start with the mysterious ON, you will find during the following information that I only speak the truth, I am not writing a book this is me writing as fast as I can without bothering about punctuation. I can’t hire a writer or someone to help me as I am leaking info and I am currently in my home writing this but have got to get back into Nintendo offices in a while.

Nintendo ON is real, whatever you have heard about the ON being fake is absolutely not true, even regarding the interview with Pablo Belmonte. Pablo is a complete fake, he did not make the video, we at Nintendo did using our own in house crew.

Pablo is a fan boy, three years ago he did make the Mario Universe fake video clip to bring some hype for upcoming Nintendo games, and we thank him for that. He does want to work for Nintendo, he approached Nintendo of America many years ago but NOA simply did not have a position for him at the time. We NOJ were very intrigued by Pablo’s outstanding work, especially for his age and the way in which he has taught himself to use all these different designing tools to create his extraordinary videos.

Nintendo leaked the ON clip especially to cause mass hype before E3 but has continued to stay quiet, there is a statement in a recent article about the ON clip on 1up.com and Perri Kaplin from NOA said ‘Who knows what comes next - virtual reality Nintendo gaming next, next generation?’ she says next generation, well as you already know this generation for Nintendo is still known as next generation as nothing has been officially released. This is a clue Nintendo is giving, I should know and I can tell you with all honesty it is the real deal.

A percentage of people from us at NOJ and NOA believe that moments after we released the ON clip and once it had spread through a host of internet message boards, that Microsoft and Sony felt in trouble that if this thing to them really existed, it could wipe out all competition. So they didn’t have much time and they had to think of a plan. So to us it seems that either one of these companies contacted Pablo Belmonte and gave him a story that was written up previously by one of those gaming companies and then they said to him to execute this and they gave him a big pay cheque, but he would have to keep quiet. Of course this is just speculation from us at Nintendo. You think why choose Pablo, well as Pablo did the Mario Universe video three years back which everyone in the gaming industry knew about when Pablo revealed that it was a fake and pointing to hype Nintendo’s future games. Then Sony and Microsoft thought this would be the ideal plan to get this ON clip to be proven that it was a fake with a great cover story. So one of the gaming companies could still steal the show at the upcoming E3. But we have continued to keep quiet about all this.

Now of course the above is still speculation made by us at Nintendo, but deep within Nintendo and I wouldn’t know who but I believe maybe someone wanted to create the cover story to discredit their own video of the ON clip, as at E3 Satouri Iwata said we are going to play a game with you and that we are going to leave clues. They would discredit the video as they know that video would create mass hype and now they watch the internet boards and monitor searches for how many people type Nintendo ON in their internet searches so they can statistically find how many they will be able to sell. Of course there are other factors that we are looking into but someone deep within us probably wants as well to keep this hype going so fan boys will find the hidden clues to prove the ON is real, but I am telling you it is real.

Before we get into the big details, Nintendo ON may not be released as we only have a few prototypes at the moment and they are very costly, we even think perhaps it won’t get down to a cheap enough price to be available as a consumer hardware. But we also have another few prototypes of a new 3D display that uses toned down features of the ON as well as more advanced features but which are in a cheaper market. This again has been worked upon throughout the years. For both systems the control mechanism is the same and this is what we have been presenting at secret showings here in Japan and America, The 3D display again will be a toned down version released for the consumer. But the version in our R&D centre has a cost of just under 745,000 US Dollars, but this is for our full system which won’t be released until 5 years time ready for the next gen. The ON may be released in two years time. For the time being a smaller version of our 3D display may be released 2006 with the Revolution system as you saw at E3. This is a good idea as we will get then feedback on how to improve the 3D display for our full system for the next gen. I will talk more about the 3D display at a later date but for now let’s move onto the ON and controller.

Nintendo ON has been in development for 10 years, ever since we at Nintendo failed miserably with the Virtual Boy we had plans for a successor straight after Virtual Boys release. We first down played a lot to the press as we thought that we were not going to go down that path again but knew we could do something and release a mark 2 which would be far superior three years after Virtual Boy, but that never happened. Research went by in all fields of virtual reality, over the years we saw considerable technology being released in the military and industrial sector to do with virtual and augmented reality. So we invested a lot of money into these companies to develop set pieces for a new revolutionary product back then codenamed Nintendo RVIS and we then thought we could really do something with this tech that was coming out of these companies. At the time there was nothing really that took everything that these companies were making and putting them all into one unique device and we liked the idea of doing that. But it was way too costly to have in a console system so our key companies continued development of revolutionary technology that would one day be used in a future system. While we were doing all this, a part of our Nintendo company was still keeping up on creating other systems to our market. As the years went by we kept a firm hold on all our upcoming tech from these companies mentioned as well as other companies bringing out new tech to all industries. Then we decided that as all these gadgets we see all over the world are getting cheaper to develop, smaller and more powerful that now was the time to integrate these all into a system that will be so powerful, easy to use, light and cheap. So we spent the last six years developing Virtual Boy 2 which is codenamed 'Nintendo ON'. It's a nice name as you are simply putting the Nintendo console on you as in ON but we decided this was not such a good name. The system is going to be named to Nintendo N-side as you are inside the game so the name works out far better.

I will now describe what the system offers for anyone that doesn't know already,

1280x1024 resolution displays for stereoscopic 3D gaming.

You can watch HD-DVD movies on them in 1280 X 720p resolution.
360 degree head tracker
microphone
surround sound ear picks
Motion sensor

More specs to follow