Nintendo Confirms Revolution Details Ahead Of E3 Showing

Following new details on Nintendo's Revolution next-gen console, reported on Friday by Nintendo vice president for corporate affairs Perrin Kaplan in a New York Times article, the company has added an official statement to is website, repeating and slightly expanding on the new specifics. The statement reinforces that, in its final form, Revolution will be about the thickness of three standard DVD cases (a little over two inches), and also notes that the console will be only slightly longer than that. It also revealed why 'thickness' was being referred to, as opposed to 'height', since the Revolution will be usable either horizontally or vertically, much as the Xbox 360 is. Nintendo continued by re-affirming Satoru Iwata's Revolution Game Developers Conference news that the console will be backward compatible, and pointing out that the Revolution will play both Nintendo GameCube 8cm disks along with its own 12cm optical disks in the same self-loading media drive. Kaplan has confirmed that the Revolution will be able to play DVDs. Finally, Nintendo confirmed in the statement that the Revolution will be wireless Internet ready out of the box, another factor that Iwata was particularly stressing at this year's GDC. The launch date for the Revolution has not yet been discussed, although recent information from Nintendo's memory supplier, MoSys, suggests that mid-2006 may be prime launch territoty for the Kyoto, Japan-headquartered company. More information on Nintendo's plans will likely be revealed at the company's pre-E3 press conference in Los Angeles tomorrow morning.