Reuters Securities has provided a story highlighting Nintendo's GBA unveiling. Aside from talking about software (see the other two GBA stories), Nintendo announced a partnership with Olympus Optical to create the "card-e" system. According to the story,

"Nintendo announced it will join forces with camera maker Olympus Optical to develop a card-swipe system enabling players to download their favourite animated characters to do battle on the pocket-sized machine.

'This is one of our many innovative and simple ideas which the new console will bring to game players and game software publishers,' Atsuo Asada, Nintendo Executive Vice President told Reuters in an interview.

Nintendo aims to launch the 'card-e' system worldwide later this year, aiming to win over younger players with the promise of a wide variety of characters that can be downloaded using special cards and card-readers.

The paper cards will carry sounds and visual data from a range of characters, including those from the phenomenally popular 'Pokemon' series."

The story also touches on the upcoming battle between next-generation home consoles where a positive bit of info is mentioned...

"Asada said the GameCube, the successor to the Nintendo64 machine, was on track for a July launch at home and a September release in the United States, followed by Europe next spring."

One final note, regarding the press conference which was mentioned in Zosha's story, but might get overlooked with the other info. At the press conference Nintendo stated that they intended to launch the Gameboy Advance worldwide by the end of June 2001. This should be great news to European and Australian readers.