Tokyo, Japan – New details emerging about Nintendo’s next generation “Revolution” follow-on to its Gamecube portable game platform indicate that it is not going to go head-to-head with either Microsoft’s high end Xbox 360 or Sony’s Playstation 3 on performance or features.

Rather, it will go where it estimates the volume is: a much lower cost, easier- on-the-pocketbook follow-on with as many features as a strict development budget will allow.

This does not mean it is not intent on revolutionizing the world of gaming, but will rather do it with smart design and innovation rather than on just more features or more clock cycles.

Rather than go to a next generation CPU designs such as Sony with its Cell architecture, or a more server-like PowerPC CPU such as Microsoft, the Revolution’s “Broadway” CPU is likely to be an extension of the architecture used in the Gamecube’s Gekko CPU, boosting performance by about two times over existing Nintendo platforms.

It will have more memory, of course, focused not necessarily on bringing more features and memory capacity to the end user, but on enhancing the performance of the CPU.

On top of the 512 MB of flash, 24 Mbytes of SRAM and 16 Mb of DRAM in the Gekko, Revolution will have additional memory where it does the performance of the system the most good, in 64 Mbytes of SRAM. That will boost access to data in memory for gaming purposes but also improve access to data and program cache memory.

In the new platform, Nintedo is also shifting from the 1.5 GBtye single layered game discs to higher capacity, dual layered discs with either 4.7 or 8.6 GBytes of capacity.

While the additional memory capacity in such devices is usually applied to improving display resolution, that is not likely in the Revolution, which will have a screen resolution about the same as that for the Gamecube.

One way designers could use that additional disc-based memory to some advantage is to use it for virtual memory storage of some key program functions that are too large to store in maim DRAM, SRAM or flash, and mask the slower memory access behind faster disc revolution speed.

In line with its view that the market will not go to the fastest or most powerful game machine that money will buy, but to an affordable box with all the power that the player will need, Nintendo is said to be ready to launch the Revolution with its 2X performance improvement over the Gamecube for about $149, or possibly $99.

Substantially lower in price than either the Xbox 360 or PS2, this will create market conditions where Microsoft and Sony will have to match Nintendo and lose money, but where  Nintendo believes it will make substantial profits if users go for their strategy. .

For more information, go to www.nintendo.com. 

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