Judging from the latest survey of opinions from major Japanese developers posted both on cube.ign.com and
www.gamesarefun.com, I would say 3rd party developers are excited and optimistic.
The demos of using the new cotroller were done on the Gamecube. Nintendo has stated that dev-kits for Revolutions are similar to the Gamecube. The API's are going to be similar. Revolution hardware is shaping up to be just an upgraded Gamecube (G5 based). That will keep costs down and make backwards compatability less of an issue.
It will kinda be like running OS compliant A500 software on an A1200/4000.
Nintendo was able to get IBM to add 37 SIMD instructions, better floating point performance and a faster front side bus to the G3 for the Gamecube. Expect similar "custom" modifications to the G5.
I haven't kept up with how fast the fsb is on the G5, but look for a mild bump there matched to the "new" Flipper's speed as well.
The Gekko in the Cube also has a short pipeline that is typical of console cpus in that the clock speed can't be turned up as high but instructions get processed sooner. This is a mistake I beleive Sony and MS have made with their PPC cores. They shot for a high clock speed (3.2GHz) but I believe that the custom G5 in the Revolution will only be 2.5Ghz but be able to more than keep up with the other 2.
As far as their GPU is concerned...I think we will just see an enhanced Flipper that combines a better memory manager and DSP that supports Dolby digital instead of just Prologic II. On the SPI interface, this is the unit that contains the realtime clock, controller ports and memory card adapters, this is where the wireless controller interface will be as well...aslo including the SD card adapters as well.
The Flipper's successor will be upgraded to support USB 2.0 instead of those propriety Serial Ports on the GC... A Broadcom wireless chip may also be linked to this instead of the current broadband adapter on the GC. They aren't targeting HD resolutions by 480p will be supported with 720p unofficially possible like the current Flipper. So you may see a Flipper with more texture memory, a more complex T&L engine and higher fill rate. Nothing too fancy, but more than capable to give you graphics that will match the other 2 consoles at 480p. That is Nintendo's point as the majority of consoles are hooked up to standard televisions, it will be able to compete equally on that level with the other 2 platforms.
I think Nintendo has realized that USB 2.0 and SD card adapters are going to reduce manufacturing costs on the unit more than having propriety stuff in there. They will lose revenue on selling memory cards...but this almost negates the hard drive requirements of next-gen systems for "downloads". Memory cards with digital rights management will probably be the sort that are used. Need more space? - buy a 2 GB memory card... They may still offer an external HD via USB anyway so you can't rule that out.
I think their goal is to have a profitable machine (as always) that can be the casual gamer's choice. For hardcore gamers, I think it will be every's second console. So if 50% of the 360 users also pick up a Revolution and 50% of the PS3 users also pick up Revolution, Nintendo is a solid #2 machine.
Since some consumers will want to play DVD's...a license to play DVD movies costs ~$20 per unit. This is why MS forced you to buy the remote to do so. Nintendo is going to sell you some sort of dongle to do so. This won't stop the system from reading DVD R/RW discs, just the ability to play DVD movies. Even the current Gamecube can read DVD R/RW discs as the "mod" community has proven.
Some people doubt the ability for Revolution to be sold at a profit @ $199. The Gamecube was sold at a profit @ $199 when it launched and it was using an upgraded G3. 5 years later, it stands to reason that Nintendo can sell you an upgraded G5 and upgraded Flipper, no?
