December 7^th, 2005 (2:21am) - Last night, IGN Revolution made a report that elaborated on the technical capabilites of Nintendo’s next-generation game console, the Nintendo Revolution, in which a number of game development sources spoke about the console’s graphical capabilities, saying that the console is definitely not as powerful as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and practically an extension of the GameCube hardware. Well, IGN has written a follow-up to that report with even more information from developers.

When the console was first revealed at E3 in May of last year, initial reports and information from Nintendo revealed that the console would use 12cm optical discs for its storage medium. Not too long after, the information was retracted from Nintendo’s official reports. Well, we can now confirm that Revolution game discs can store 4.7GBs of data on a single layer and 8.5Gbs when double-layered on a single side.

A number of developers have made it clear that, in an official document given to them by Nintendo, the Revolution will feature a total of 104MBs of RAM. The console builds on the GameCube’s 24MBs of 1T-SRAM and 16MBs of D-RAM (40MBs) by adding 64MBs of 1T-SRAM. Interestingly enough, this number does not take into consideration the 512MBs of "allegedly" accessible Flash RAM, which may not be the best to use for game development, and the Hollywood GPU’s on-board memory, which is said to be 3MBs.

Those who assumed that the Revolution would be a turbo charged version of the GameCube weren’t too far away from the truth. The console’s CPU, which goes by the name of "Broadway," is an extension of the GameCube’s Gekko CPU, and while developers haven’t received the opportunity to work with the console’s actual "Hollywood" GPU, it is being said that the GPU will be an extension of the Flipper GPU in the GameCube.

"The CPU is the same as Gekko with one and a half to two times the performance and improved caching," said one of IGN’s sources. "Our guys experimented with it and think they’ll be able to get about twice the performance as GameCube."

The clock rates of the console had not been revealed, however one of IGN’s development sources happened to say the following:

"Basically, take a GameCube, double the clock rate of the CPU and GPU and you’re done."

When this information was presented to another development source, they mentioned that the clock rates may even fall short of doubling those of the GameCube.

These development houses has mentioned that they see the Revolution launching at a $149.99 price point, and maybe even lower.

We’ll have more information on the console as it breaks...