Revolution controller shouldn't be that much of a problem for multi-platform publishing, says Reggie.
Investment firm UBS is holding its 33rd Annual Global Media Conference this week in New York City. Representatives from just about every major news, information, and entertainment media company got together to talk about industry trends and their visions for the future. The game industry was well-represented with Activision, Atari, Take-Two and Microsoft in attendance, along with Nintendo of America.
Nintendo VP of sales and marketing Reggie Fils-Aime was on hand to explain Nintendo's current situation in the market and plans for the future. The presentation given at the event was virtually a carbon copy of the one given to the gaming media at Nintendo Gamers' Summit a month ago, aside from some updated sales numbers. Nintendogs, for example, has now surpassed 950,000 units sold worldwide, and is sure to hit a million by the end of the year.
Fils-Aime also touched base on Revolution, giving out the same information that we've known since Tokyo Game Show in September. However, Nintendo is now making a new claim about the Revolution. According to the presentation slides shown during his speech, game makers will find that the system will be “easy to port” games to, despite the unique controller interface that Revolution will bring to the table.
When elaborating on that point, Reggie didn't make it sound quite that easy. “Porting games... that's as easy or as complex as any team wants it to be.” He elaborated on the traditional controller shell, stating that developers could simply use that if they wanted to port over a game to Revolution with little effort. “But the most ambitious of the developers,” said Reggie, “will write new code, different code, to allow the controller to be taken into brand new directions.”
Only time will tell exactly how many ports the Nintendo Revolution will get, and whether or not the freestyle pointer or nunchaku controller will work for or against Nintendo in that regard. Add this one onto the list of questions that will finally be answered at E3 2006, when Nintendo will reveal everything there is to know about Revolution.