November 1^st, 2005 (3:47pm) - As of late, Nintendo of Europe’s marketing director, Jim Merrick, has been a Nintendo fan’s most reliable source of news regarding the Nintendo Revolution. While many of Nintendo reps have kept quiet about the hardware and its games, Merrick has been quite verbal and as a result, many Revolution enthusiasts have had their anticipation levels for the console increase even further. Yesterday, through an interview with Meristation, Merrick revealed a good amount of juicy Revolution details and today even more information has surfaced.

When Nintendo first revealed hardware tech specs of the GameCube, its numbers were actually quite low compared to the specifications released by Sony and Microsoft. To say the least, Nintendo’s numbers were conservative, since the GameCube is in fact more powerful than the PlayStation 2 and can deliver in-game visuals on par with those of the very best looking Xbox games. So, while the numbers reported on specification sheets may have been much lower than those reported by its competitors, the GameCube held its own. Unfortunately, these initial specifications threw off a number of gamers and as a result many have often misinterpreted the GameCube as the least powerful of the three current gaming platforms.

In an effort to avoid a similar situation, in an interview with Dutch magazine [N]Gamer, Merrick stated that "[Nintendo] will probably never ’release’ this information as we feel that it is largely irrelevant. While some of our competitors enjoy comparing specifications, it has little or nothing to do with how satisfied the consumers will be with the system and the games once they are released," he added. "I know people are hungry for information on Revolution and we respect and appreciate that, but we don’t want to contribute to the cloud of meaningless information that surrounds the next generation systems."

Merrick also mentioned that the development of games in the Super Mario, Legend of Zelda, Metroid Prime and Super Smash Bros. series is "progressing well" for the Revolution. He also added that not all games for the console will be played using the "freehand" style remote, but as well as the nunchaku setup, in addition to the classic-style expansion controller.

"[The] option is there for new games that will be created that are most suited to a traditional style of controller. We are not trying to say that the ’traditional’ controller design is not valid, in fact Nintendo is responsible for most of the features that are found on today’s traditional controllers," Merrick pointed out.

We’ll keep you updated on all Revolution developments...