Exclusive: Revolution to Launch Worldwide in June 2006

Nah, let's have some fun first!

So, we lose the member from the North American chapter of the Fscktard Sheep Brigade only to have him replaced by one from the Oz chapter. Neeto.

All good fun, 'til we get bored.

probaly already know,but its so easy to get back on to a site when u get banned.i have been banned from loads and can get back on them now.

Yup, we know, but logs of a user's IPs can go some way to alerting admins to the resurfacing of the banned.

Plus it takes *way* longer to sign up than it does to ban.

I totally agree that june would serve as a perfect launch time frame for the rev. I mean before may and the world will still have yet to see what the revolution is all about because there will have been no public location to show it off it all its glory. E3 will serve as the perfect commercial and allow Nintendo to completely steal the show and the imminent release the next month will only feed the momentum. Besides that will mean that nintendo should have a bevy of complete to nearly complete games to showcase (perhaps all for the very first time).

We have heard very little from 'N' on the rev even though they seemed to indicate that it could have launched by the end of this year. It would be a great strategy to have started the full scale manufacturing process but to keep it under wraps so to be able to have a massive one day sell-thru of the unit. Keeping the release secret as long as possible could very well allow 'N' to flank sony with a total unexpected release and make Sony their pet female dog...if you know what i mean. At this point sony knows all of MS's plans but if they dont see the rev coming they may get lax and hold back their ps3 for more completed games(game demos) to be done...then smack Rev is out and everybody has forgotten about ps3.

I think that would be perfect, and until june comes and goes without the release this very well seems to be an exclusive story.

Christian

It's not pure fantasy. I read the Jack Thompson article shortly after it was posted and it's quite different now. I didn't say that the Revolution article was edited.

And I know Zeo was banned for trolling, but if he was not trolling and actually trying to make a point about spong having mysterious exclusives that aren't actually true, he would pull something up from the archives. Here's part of an "exclusive" article I saved because I knew it would not come true:

"The new model of the Game Boy Advance will be shown at Nintendo’s E3 press conference this year in what will be one of the most remarkable moments in recent videogame history."

This part sort of came true. The article was saying we'd get the next Game Boy system, but we instead got the Micro. But a spong rep said this:

"You have to bear in mind, however, that we are dealing with a chaotic system here. The fact that we have released this information could (theoretically, I'm not saying it will) create a wave of outcry so extensive that it leads Nintendo to re-consider, and to alter their strategy."

Right, like Nintendo would alter their strategy because of anything spong did. Extremely unlikely. Continuing with the article:

"The unit will be a true gaming machine and will come equipped with a large high-quality back-lit screen and analogue controls, very much, one might argue, like Sony’s PSP."

Obviously, this didn't come true, as that is nothing like the Micro at all.

"Nintendo staffers have confirmed to SPOnG.com that preliminary hardware will be shown both at the firm’s conference and encased alongside the Nintendo Revolution on the showfloor."

The Revolution was not on the show floor. It wasn't even playable behind closed doors.

"Indeed, SPOnG has been privvy to the emergence of the next-generation of Game Boy Advance for some time, though little more than it’s E3 debut was known."

If that's the case, the above extremely incorrect statements would not have been made.

"Nintendo will unveil a suite of PDA-focussed software for the DS powered by recently licensed Palm OS technology. The machine will evolve from a pure gaming machine into a PDA equipped to play Nintendo 64 quality games. Essentially, Nintendo believes that with the right software, it has a high-powered, wireless-enabled PDA capable of playing games of a higher standard than any competing device."

This is probably the most out there statement. Nintendo has no PDA software and to my knowledge, the only third party DS PDA software is in Asia. And to complete the exclusives, this statement:

"The new Game Boy will be based around existing Nintendo GameCube hardware and will be, when it launches in the US and Japan towards the end of this year, the most powerful handheld console on the planet. SPOnG also believes it likely that the machine will make use of GameCube software. Revolution connectivity was confirmed."

Nope. Didn't happen. But this news article was early March of this year, so maybe Nintendo will be releasing this mysterious handheld that spong knew all about in the next two months? And I'm surely quite glad my DS is such a dedicated PDA now.

Just don't consider this trolling, as it isn't. All I did was copy and paste an exclusive spong article. But perhaps I was wrong about editing exclusives that don't come true, as you can see the complete falsity of this story right here: http://news.spong.com/detail/news.asp?prid=8385

No, but it's as close as dammit. We do sometime re-write stories, but typically because I read what Stef has written, and worry about how my asshole will suffer when I am put in jail for libel. And then I edit it, or occasionally, make him edit it.

Also, sometimes, we edit stories because, on reflection, we change our mind about our analysis of the situation.

Also, sometimes we change stories slightly (and I re-iterate the slightly part here) when PR people call up to compain that we blew an exlcusive that they had agreed to swap for a good review score in some magazine.

But we NEVER edit stories to cover up for our errors. The thing is and I've said this a million times here. Gathering news is a difficult game. Most of the publishers and platform holders want to treat news as a commodity, and to swap it for coverage in the printed press. So they stay tight lipped.

Every time we get wind of something, we have to evaluate whether it is a wind-up, whether it is a simple lie, or whether it is likely to happen. We make a decision to publish after some condiseration, and sometimew e are wrong - we work in an industry where the canning of products at all stages of development is rife.

As for the Nintendo E3 thing, we were inaccurate. But then we were the ONLY publication to say that there would be new Game Boy hardware at E3. And we were right.

The form factor of the Micro is PSP-esque (central screen, controls at either side.

And the DS is getting PDA software, see the story we ran on it today.. Plus its getting paint.



What is it then. Baiting? Nitpicking? The carefully considered opinion of someone who has never had to walk the tightrope of gathering news (rather than just re-writing press releases) in a modern corporate-controlled information environment?

It could construed as baiting, because it was intended to provoke a response. This is only because you can't bitch people out who say you have posted exclusives that don't turn out true. You have. Most publications have. But if you have true faith in your credibility, is there any need to respond to critisism with direct attacks? "Don't feed the trolls" is a mantra I've found quite successful.

I've walked the tightrope of news gathering for 3.5 years now and had my fair share of slipups, but when that happens, we immediately update the article to give the clarified information or to just say it's wrong. And while in my publication's infancy, we were called a rumour mill, that no longer happens. Spong gets called worse often and has for years, which either means you do post too much false information, or when you do you don't handle it well.

But at least you dignified me with a courteous response. I'll admit I was expecting worse, so I thank you for that.

There's no need. But I quite enjoy it. The idea that being happy to fight masks a lack of faith in our credibility is specious. I just like a fight! It's BECAUSE I have faith in our credibility that I react poorly to it being attacked by people who clearly prefer their journalism without any speculation or investigation. Particularly if the criticism is poorly reasoned and infantile.



But we RARELY say "this is a fact" when we know it to be speculation or tentative infomation. And we do get more right than the criticism implies. I wish we got even more correct, but I'm not really prepared to be Microsoft or EA's bitch in order to do that. It's fun poking around and breaking things without having to toe the corporate line.



There was no reason to expect worse. We only respond poorly to the idiots, baiters, and trolls. Your posting was well reasoned, and that is always welcome here.

I find it very specific he used the new GBA hardware exclusive spong had as a example. There's one factor you have to consider if you want to critisise a exclusive newspost about Nintendo, it's Nintendo.

What i mean by this is that Nintendo is a huge last-minute company where gamedirectors get the last word to the last minute to cancel any info going out to the press. Nintendo is also a huge conceptcompany that possesses many small cells that think of new stuff all the time. Sometimes a concept gets picked up by the higher ups and the talks about setting up the project is being made. When circumstances change and present conditions change this project (still in its paperfase) gets canned.

I can understand spong posting that news if you consider that Big N called the DS a third pillar and hints that GC-disks would be perfect for a portable system from Nintendo themselves.
What keeps me from saying that the DS was called the third pillar for not comprimising the strong Game Boy brand name and Nintendo actually had a PSP-like handheld powerhouse in development if (thats a big if) the DS would not sell well to jump for the hole. The announcemnt of the DS and its first appearance and its launch had one thing written all over it: rushed.
Nintendo probably had a portable GC in development but the PSP forced them to speed things a lot more up and they needed a new portable now, not in 2-3 years when lithium batteries could make their portable GC run for 10 hours straight (gotta love Nintendo's hardware quality demands in that regard).

Things can get scrapped and with Nintendo can be scrapped at the very last minute. Bad luck for Spong because they get discredited if that happens, but as a historian in training I have to say that by posting those exclusives they indirectly give a different insight in what's going on behind the scenes. I hope they keep doing that.

I am kind of lost on this whole issue. If you don't like spong's reports, then you don't have to read them. No one is forcing you too. And besides, they could write a story on Nintendo merging with Sony, and you know what the best part is? They can... the internet is a scary place... live with it.

Well I am not sure on the release date but it does appear that Nintendo is going for global release when it does. So this story does have some truth.
One thing for sure is that support for Nintendo Revolution is growing, and there are some very well respected game creators singing the praises of Revolution.
I am sure all the Sony and MS fans will argue this, but support is growing, you cant stop that.

nintendo's problem will not be industry respect or how many devolpers sign up, it will public awareness.i was talkin to a mate were i work , we started talkin bout games.i asked him did he know what the N revo was.he didnt have a clue,the fact is all most gamers can see is PLAYSTATION.nintendo need to increase awarness.

I'm sure Nintendo are quite aware of the struggle ahead and from the recent success with the DS also know that spending a lot of money on marketing pays off. I reckon they're gonna have the bases covered when it comes to getting the message across. Vive le revolution!

Yeah I think that Nintendo did a good job with the marketing of the DS. The system is a success, many people had written off Nintendo when they released the DS.
I think they have the same philosophy for the Revolution.
Once word spreads on how innovative and fun the Revolution is then awareness will increase.
I think that unfortunately for Nintendo the industry does seem rather biased towards Sony. I remember last year I went into Tesco and I couldnt find any GBA games and yet it is a very popular console much more than Gamecube. Of course there were PS2 and PS1 games there.
Nintendo need to loosen their wallet a bit more and spend the type of money on marketing that Sony does, Nintendo has the money to do it.
I am sure they will.

I hope this isn't just another load of Spong bull.

This does sound realistic, but ther price in Europe will be roughly corresponding with the US price, so 200 €, or about 150 pounds.