Outside of the delay, that was about all Nintendo had at the GDC. Great way to sway support for the system. The way I see it, is it's about time Nintendo shows it's cards. And I don't mean in the Pokemon type either...unless it's a Dolphin game. Matt from IGN paints a pretty bleak picture of the Nintendo camp at GDC. What gives? No offense Nintendo, but a fish in the bag as a joke about Dev kits isn't too funny right now.

We couldn’t be more disappointed with Nintendo’s lackluster presence at the GDC and the company’s traditional defensive announcement that Dolphin will be delayed to 2001, but oh joy, it’ll arrive the “first half” of next-year and not the second half like Microsoft’s machine. Even more discouraging though were the comments we heard from the development community. While most software houses we spoke with are already well into production of PS2 and X-Box titles, very few of them have signed up to create games for Nintendo’s next-generation system. In fact, Dolphin was the butt of many playful jokes at GDC. “We’ll develop for Dolphin in five years when Nintendo finally releases some information on it,” commented one programmer for a respected development house. Another explained, “Nintendo is making the same old mistakes – it’s not giving us any incentive to bother with Dolphin.”

The sad fact is that Nintendo has really revealed nothing about its next-generation console since its initial announcement at last year’s Electronics Entertainment Expo. As one developer pointed out, “It’s funny – Microsoft has shown us more about X-Box and hyped the system more in one day than Nintendo has for Dolphin since it first announced the system 10 months ago. It’s ridiculous.”

Of course, not all the news is bad. We stopped by Nintendo’s low-key boxed-in conference booth and met up with a few of Dolphin’s elite, nearly all of whom seemed unfazed by Microsoft’s X-Box presentation. Nintendo itself made light of the situation, providing hand-out bags that read, “I’m a Dolphin developer (development kits enclosed).” Inside the bag is a small, squishy Dolphin toy. The company also featured playable kiosks of games Perfect Dark (running with an improved framerate) and Excitebike 64.

The Big N also handed out information for potential Dolphin developers. While the company is actively seeking software backing for the system, technical director Jim Merrick admits that it does not yet have a formal development program in place. Because of that, potential Dolphin developers are encouraged instead to create prototype games on “the highest performance PC that can be configured,” in preparation for Nintendo’s future system.

At the end of the day, we’re still confident that Dolphin will be an amazing piece of work when it finally does arrive. But it’s clear – now more than ever – that Nintendo needs to take action, proving that its next-generation console is a viable platform to developers and gamers alike. The quality of over quality mantra didn’t work for Nintendo 64 in the end, it only left Nintendo loyalists hungry for more software and gave Sony an insurmountable leap in the console race. With almost every development house and publisher creating X-Box and PS2 games, will they still have time to back Dolphin when Nintendo finally gets around to recruiting support?