Nintendo Will D

Nintendo will be début their successor to the GameCube at next May’s E3. To be in a position to demo the console, referred to as the N5, in less than a year mean that they must have been developing it for a while.

An E3 showcase could mean a December launch for Japan, March 2006 for the US and a summer 2006 launch for the UK. Now that I’ve just typed that, it doesn’t seem so imminent after all. The timing is crucial, however – it will give Nintendo a lead on Sony and Microsoft when they launch their PS3 Xbox Next consoles. We’d just like to point out that this strategy did nothing to save Sega when they launched the Dreamcast ahead of the PS2.

The new console will almost certainly have advanced link up capabilities with the new DS handheld which will have been out on the market for a year by the time the N5 hits Akihabara. Of course, all of this is speculation as no details about the box have been released.

Nintendo didn’t have much luck with the GameCube, despite it looking great on paper: a technically advanced console, small and portable, quality games and characters, with a price (eventually) less than it’s competitors – Sony and Microsoft wiped the floor with it nonetheless, and many developers are cancelling scheduled games for it as sales continue to drop.

Sorry, was I talking about the GameCube there or the Dreamcast again?

Nintendo

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Fraser Lovatt

Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people.Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon.At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC.After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video.These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?