Dev Kits in the hands of developers for 6 months??

The Dolphin is still on being planned for a end of FY 2000 launch??

Nintendo will take on Microsoft's X-box and the Sony PS2 in one shot??

No real announcements at E3?? (Gosh, I hated writing that part!)

A couple of weeks ago, the nasty rumor hit that Nintendo’s Dolphin would be delayed beyond when we hoped that it would launch, and that there were some nasty licensing fees associated with it. The story about the licensing fees has recently been refuted as being "grossly over exaggerated", and now, I believe this story to be the "official" response to the delay part of the rumor. Well, OK, I don't know for sure if Nintendo provided some of this information to IGN as an official response, but it is a nice thought.

Please pay a visit to our friends at IGN and read the full news article that Matt was kind enough to warm our hearts with.

But basically, the article states that "select" developers have indeed had "pre-mature" Dolphin development kits on hand as early as 6 months ago. If this is true, then it does also mean that there is still a very good chance that the Dolphin will make it's projected launch date.

See, I told you so. You don't go off and make a webcast targeted at investors and, more importantly, the investment community media about forecasts for the next fiscal year unless you are sincere about what you say. That is suicide. Fact is, that Peter Main stated in his 1999 Year In Review speach, that revenues are forcasted to be generated from the next next-gen systems (which include Dolphin AND GBA) towards the end of fiscal year ending 2000. Nintendo's fiscal year ends in March 2001. Why would Nintendo wait until March 2001 to release their next systems? Well, I suppose they could if they had to, but the optimum time would be just before the holiday buying frenzy.

The article also states that Nintendo will not make any Dolphin announcements at the GDC this year. This is because the X-box is slated to be spoken about at the GDC. Nintendo, who likes to show their hand last in the big poker game that we know as the video game industry, will wait until E3, or more likely Spaceworld to make any big showings.

Dammit. This will be my first E3 that I have ever attended, and I really hope to see something "Dolphin" there. I darn sure can't afford to fly my butt to Japan for Spaceworld ...

The article also states that the Dolphin will be comparable to what the X-box says that it can do. Well, no $%@!. Coming from the cartridge medium for so long, if there is one thing that Nintendo and it's close friends know how to do, it's to write tight code. Microsoft on the other hand, who has shown the tendancy to bring whatever new whiz-bang processor that Intel creates to it's knees with it's insane amount of ridiculous overhead in it's code .. doesn't stand a chance. You can take a 400Mhz CPU to it's knees with too much overhead (Windows 2000 anyone?)