So the Nintendo press conference is going on right now as you can see on the moblog Maarten and Alec are attending the show grabbing up some more HD footage for later on today. In the mean time here are some quick hits on what Nintendo has announced for Revolution:

- WiFi controllers and a 'very unique' controller to be introduced later
- WiFi games with Nintendo characters
- "strong 3rd party support"
- Square Enix working on wifi Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles
- game development is claimed to be a breeze
- disc drive accepts GameCube games but system is backwards compat w/ all past Nintendo games via downloads
- unique way to combine internet, controlling, flash memory to combine a unique game experience. keeps hinting towards "all-access"
- 2006 console

Thanks anthonybean for collecting a lot of these. Also, GameBoy Micro - new GameBoy Advance about the size of an iPod Mini

Congrats to Jack, our in-house Metroid Prime whore. Check out this trailer that just came out. For butchering a sidescroller in to a 3D FPS game, it looks pretty good!

A site called Newtechnix has four Tony Hawk 4 GameCube screenshots, which seem to be scanned. Looks pretty cool, and it looks like there will be mini-games in this one. Saw that on Voodoo Extreme.

Cube.IGN is reporting (to the general public at last, it was Insider locked for a few days) that the GameCube version of Zelda has been delayed, with a February 2003 release looking more likely at this point. It was originally set to ship in December. Cube owners still have Mario Sunshine and Metroid Prime to look forward to, but it's still somewhat disappointing news. An official announcement is expected during or after E3, which starts on Wednesday.

Gamespot has an update on the new relationship between Square and Nintendo (story). It looks like people expecting a Final Fantasy game on the GameCube soon will be dissapointed. For now, the new company will only be developing games for the Game Boy Advance. Though creating a game which uses the Cube/GBA connectivity has not been ruled out.

[...] it was initially reported that Fund Q--a fund set up by Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi to help encourage game development, focusing specifically on games that utilize the connectivity feature between the GameCube and Game Boy Advance--would also factor into the agreement. But Murakawa told GameSpot that Fund Q is only one of several approaches Square plans to take with the new company. He did, however, say that the company still may take the connectivity option into account. "The objective of the new company is to develop GBA titles, so GameCube titles are not a part of the plan," he said. "But because the Game Boy Advance and GameCube allow for link connectivity, we may make use of such a feature in the future."

Normally this would end up in Late Night Consoling, but this is pretty big seeing how the Final Fantasy series has been Sony Playstation exclusive for a while now. Gamespot is reporting that after five years, Final Fantasy will return to Nintendo platforms. Games will be developed for the GameCube and Game Boy Advance.

Under the agreement, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi will allocate money from Fund Q--a fund Yamauchi set up in January to help encourage software development--to a new Square-affiliated development house. In return, Square will establish the new development house with help from Akitoshi Kawazu, a director from the Final Fantasy development team, by the end of this month. The Square affiliate is expected to release games for both the GameCube and Game Boy Advance before the end of the year. Square properties other than Final Fantasy were not mentioned in the report.

Thanks Jeremy Stewart and disembodied potato.

Computer and Video Games obtained launch details for Nintendo's GameCube console in Europe. It will launch the 3rd of May and will set you back 249 Euros, which is around $215.

Though Cube.IGN gave us a scan of two screenshots from Nintendo Power back in December, three non-scanned shots of the upcoming Metroid Prime have now surfaced at Computer and Video Games. There's one third person and two first person shots. Update: ok so those shots are actually from this Nintendo page where they have a bunch more shots.

Some more details on Metroid Prime (Say hi Jack!) have surfaced in the recent issue of Nintendo Power. Along with a couple of shots that are scanned in the ball mode is revealed which is in 3rd person mode. Some other shots came out earlier.

The screenshot appears to be real-time showing off absolutely stunning visuals featuring reflection maps, moody lighting, and nice particle effects. It's set on what appears to be the interior of a ship

For those of you living in a cave with your wife who hasnt heard of LOTR, Metroid is being developed here in Austin by Retro Studios and is going to be a FPS game. Quite the departure from the sidescroller roots of all the previous Metroid titles.

Nintendo has finally indicated some kind of release date for the GameCube in Europe. Looks like it be'll out around April or May, more details should be announced next month.

While this happened 2 days ago, Super Smash Bros. Melee and Pikmin for the Nintendo Gamecube are now out in stores. The games were two of the more eagerly anticipated games for the Gamecube. I've also written up review pages for them.

IEMag has a pretty good Nintendo interview you may wish to check out. The VP of corporate affairs actually. Talk is about all kinds of GameCube stuff like meeting demand and market orientation etc.

Some more boasting by Nintendo about stellar GameCube sales figures for their console machine. Looks like they have sold over a half million units already and are continuing to sell out in some locations. Anyone seen an announcement from Microsoft on sales yet?

Nintendo is the first one out of the gate announcing some kind of sales figures for the GameCube. They stunned quite a few people with the number of just under $100million in sales for Sunday. Beating out Harry Potter they say for raw $ numbers. Of course GameCube's are $200 a pop as opposed to the $5 to $10 most people pay for movies. An IGN story quotes a Nintendo rep saying   "It's over what we think Microsoft's allocation was".

No word yet from Microsoft on what their sales figures were. Also Nintendo declined to say how many units were sold. The top selling games were Luigi's Mansion and Rogue Leader as expected.

Update: Goldman Sachs did a survey among U.S. retailers in big cities, and so far 73% had sold out of the Xbox and 47% out of the Gamecube. Microsoft shipped an estimated 300,000 Xbox consoles around the nation, while Nintendo delivered some 700,000.

As most people know, the Nintendo GameCube launched over the weekend and along with the launch comes a bunch of games to play with. Here's a compilation of some of the more interesting viewpoints expressed in the thread from yesterday: Here they are in some wacked out table format for the hell of it:

Well, today is launch day for the GameCube system from Nintendo. We'll most likely see a few reviews / impressions showing up today and a mad rush of them showing up tomorrow. The Cube is $100 cheaper than the XBox or Playstation2 at launch, but honestly from my perspective doesnt really have a very strong launch title lineup with the exception of Tony Hawk 3. (Which rocks). I dont think I'll be going out to get one just yet, but when Zelda, Mario, Metroid, and Soul Calibur 2 all get closer... well it'll be time to reconsider.  Here's my oh so accurate predictions of how the games will go:

- Tony Hawk 3 - rocks
- Rogue Leader - good, pretty...
- Luigi's Mansion - mixed, average
- Super Monkey Ball - mixed, good for friends/groups
- Wave Race - N64 rehash, not much new
- Madden 2002 - No idea.
- Future releases list

note: If you get a GameCube, feel free to post your impressions/reviews of games in the comments. Will pick through them at the end of the day and highlight the good ones for the Monday morning update. Thanks for the idea tomservo :)

The GameCube launched at midnight in a few different locations across the US. Mostly places like Wal-Mart etc. If you're one of the folks who picked one up feel free to share your first impressions here.

Here's one that is pretty impressive. Nintendo just won a massive domain "cyber squatter" award for 49 different domain names that were snatched up by unnamed parties. In addition to the domains they got $560,000 in damages ranging from $2,000 to $30,000 for different domains.

The mass domain suit marked the company's first under the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. Richard C. Flamm, vice president and general counsel to Nintendo of America declared, "Nintendo is pleased the court recognized the company's intellectual property rights and understood the damages that are caused by cybersquatting." [snip]

With this in mind, I've decided against opening PlanetShackGameCubeExtremeNews3D.com

A report from the guys at Planetgamecube is saying that Nintendo has given clearance to retailers to start selling the console machines early. Apparently Nintendo is getting their jollies by trying to undermine the XBox release that was scheduled to happen 3 days before GameCube.

Over the weekend, we'd heard smatterings of reports that Stores are starting to receive their GameCube units, and that they are starting to appear on eBay. Since eBay is hardly a bastion of accurate reporting, we've done some legwork, including making a couple phone calls to Nintendo. Here's the skinny ... Nintendo has started shipping GameCubes. (YES!) This is a week earlier than was anticipated. While some stores claim to have been told by their corporate liasons to Nintendo that they will be fined if they sell early, this appears to not be the case. Nintendo has told us that stores are free to sell the GameCube as soon as it arrives, in order to get a jump on the X-Box launching on Thursday. They also said that no store would be fined for breaking the release date.

Looks like Nintendo is going to meet the demands for GameCubes on launch, according to one of the execs they already have over 300,000 cubes produced and sitting in a warehouse in the US. Thanks HomeLAN