EGM interview with Reggie at 1up.com

[A Black Falcon]

That, philosophically, is quite different than what our competitors do. There's going to be no subscription fee; we're not looking at this as a profit-driven program. We're looking at it as a way to bring more enjoyment and satisfaction to the game. And we think with what we're doing on Kart, what we're going to be doing on Animal Crossing, what we're going to be doing on future Revolution wireless Internet games, we think that's a fundamentally different model than what's being done today.

But lack of profit is what made them wait so long... um... yeah, that makes sense...

Oh, and I doubt that it'll be as different as he suggests. It just doesn't seem likely, given how online games work...

RFA: The thing that I always find surprising, and certainly in the last year I've had wonderful opportunities to spend quality time with a number of our key third-party publishers, is when you sit down and share the innovation with them, just how excited they get. I saw it firsthand with DS; we're seeing it now with Revolution. The fact that you and your fans haven't seen the controller doesn't mean that no one else has.

I thought that that talk about how the Revolution controller wasn't finished was mostly marketing-speak to mislead the competition, and I think I was probably right... maybe it was technically true (like they haven't agreed on everything (like how the Z button and dpad were added later on in the GC controller's development), but have the 'new' part down), but close enough.

I mean, again, and Mr. Iwata did this during his presentation on Tuesday—if you just think about it, we're going to have the ability through wireless internet to download all of your great games from NES, SNES, N64. Think about it: Each of those controllers were different. How are you gonna play? That captured some the imagination of what our controller needs to be able to do, and certainly as you get into the meat of that type of innovation with the developers, their eyes truly light up because they start to imagine what's possible with that type of configuration, which is vastly different than a sheer horsepower type of game.

Can I cross my fingers and hope for 6 face buttons, then? ... either that or something utterly bizarre... we'll just have to wait (yeah, I know, it's a pain... isn't Nintendo cruel? :)).