Harrison: Third Party Support Strong For Revolution

In a new interview with U.S. consumer game magazine Game Informer, Nintendo of America’s senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications George Harrison talked about several topics, including third-party support for the company's upcoming Revolution platform, as well as its price, packaging, and lessons that he and Nintendo took away from the GameCube. Regarding the amount of third-party support Harrison expects for the Revolution's launch, a topic that many followers of Nintendo hold as paramount considering the lukewarm support that has been given to the GameCube, Harrison stated: "I think it’s going to be pretty broad. I don’t have an exact answer because I’ve only been interfacing with some of them. We’ve heard a few of them from their financial calls. We heard EA talking about having a few games that they were going to be showing at E3 and also are hoping to launch with. So it’s hard for me to know what the breadth and depth is. We’ve got more than 1,000 developer kits including the controller kits, out, so there should be plenty there." He particularly noted: "One of the lessons we tried to learn from GameCube was that we kept things too close. And so as we got ready to launch, we had some of our own great games but third parties were kind of behind the eight ball in terms of being able to have games ready.” Touching on the as-yet-unannounced price of the console, Harrison noted, “Well we haven’t announced that yet and we might not even announce it at E3. We’re in something of a cat and mouse game with competitors to see what they’ll say. But the idea is that you should have everything you need with the Revolution to get underway.“ Finally, with the GameCube's replacement rapidly approaching, Harrison took a moment to reflect on Nintendo's current-generation platform, and what lessons the company took away from the GameCube that could be applied to the next generation. "I think that, oddly enough, when people talk about horsepower, sheer graphical processing and things, the system that had the least impressive technical specs, the PlayStation 2, became the huge winner in the last generation,” said Harrison. “That told us that it wasn’t always just about horsepower. One of the things that we did learn, and one of the reasons that we’re here today is that you have to get third party involvement early and they have to be able to get access early.” You can read the entire interview in the June issue of Game Informer, which arrived on store shelves today - the interview is also available online for magazine subscribers.