Iwata's pre-keynote interview

[Smoke]

Dean Takahashi from The Mercury News had a chance to talk to Nintendo president Satoru Iwata on Tuesday night to discuss his GDC keynote. The first comment indicates that Iwata may hold off on most--if not all--new information on the Revolution until E3 (what? no renaming?). However, Iwata did reassert his commitment to having the Revolution playable for E3 attendees. Iwata did have some ambitious words to say about Nintedo's online service: "Our concept is to get 80 percent to 90 percent of the players online"--a huge figure considering the Xbox Live service is used by only around 10% of Xbox / Xbox 360 owners.

Discussing the Xbox 360 shortage, Iwata told Takahashi that he believes Nintendo will not have the same problem: " I think I understand where their problems were. I don’t want to give an answer because I don’t want to give them any help." Iwata also noted that he had heard about Microsoft's rumored portable device, but that he did not have enough information and that "it doesn't have an effect on [them] this year."

If Iwata does, in fact, reveal the new name for the "Revolution" (or just makes the title official), Joystiq will break the news approximately 42 seconds after Mr. Iwata finishes his sentence.

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Joystiq

[Great Rumbler]

Iwata is so cool.

[Sacred Jellybean]

Iwata did have some ambitious words to say about Nintedo's online service: "Our concept is to get 80 percent to 90 percent of the players online"--a huge figure considering the Xbox Live service is used by only around 10% of Xbox / Xbox 360 owners.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Holy shit. Nintendo who?

That's great news, though.

[Dark Jaguar]

That's an intention, not a proper plan on how they are actually going to get all those people online.

However, MS at least made a move in the right direction with a free version of it's online system. Sony is improving that by making it much more open to developers. They can chose to go their own route or use Sony's networks or use a combination of the two. Further, Sony has been stating they have a lot of intention of developing a more "open" platform so a lot of people can design their own games and share them on Sony's little network. Also, the PS3 has Linux already installed (a version of it anyway). Also, a lot of interconnectivity with the PSP including downloading PS1 games to a substantially sized memory stick. Sony seems very interested in making their platform "open".

Nintendo's plans leave a lot of room for speculation. I certainly have high hopes. Let's see what Nintendo has in store. An open development situation from both Nintendo and Sony woudl really put MS in a pinch.