September 16^th, 2005 (10:08am) - Nintendo of Europe’s Senior Director of Marketing, Jim Merrick, sat down with Eurogamer.net to discuss a few things about the controversial Nintendo Revolution controller, which had been revealed last night by Nintendo’s President Satoru Iwata. In this interview, Merrick discussed a great many things, and surprisingly answered many of the publications questions, instead of steering the interviewer in circles with vague comments and references.

In regards to being able to play multiplatform titles on the Revolution, Merrick revealed that Nintendo is currently producing a classic-style expansion controller, based on a more traditional controller design, like the GameCube’s, which acts as a shell in which you slide the remote-styled freehand controller into it, thus allowing gamers to play "third-party ported games, and retro Nintendo games you’ve downloaded." Although, "the freehand controller will still be able to sense positioning and so on, so there are more options too."

"In an FPS game you’re holding the remote in your right hand and shooting with your left, using the analog control to strafe from side to side and crouch and so on." Praising the controller’s unique abilities, Merrick said that the Revolution’s controller will be "the ultimate controller for first person shooters."

In response to a question which asked why no games had been shown, Merrick said that "we didn’t want to detract from what we are trying to show. We’re talking about a fundamental change to how we see games and how we play games, and we didn’t want to get hung up on polygon counts and so on."

"The official launch of the console is 2006," he added. Additionally, he confirmed that we’ll be able to get to play and see the Revolution’s games at next year’s E3 in May 2006, by saying "if I went to E3 2006 and didn’t end up playing the Revolution, I’d be very disappointed."

Merrick also confirmed that the Revolution’s controller will be fully compatible will all kinds of television sets. "This isn’t working on a scan line basis," said Merrick. "It’s not like the old lightgun technology, where you had the classic problem of requiring a CRT screen."

Ending the interview, Merrick revealed that there’s still more about the Revolution that readers have not seen. He ended the interview with the following: "Let’s just say we have more surprises in store."