Despite worldwide launches of both the Xbox 360 (although not for Australia) and the PS3, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has gone on record saying that it was unlikely that its next generation console code named Revolution would see a worldwide launch.

Iwata said "we don't think it's necessary to do the same simultaneous worldwide launch simply because others are doing this". Mr. Iwata also suggested that competition with the PS3 launch in November was irrelevant because they are very different systems, Iwata said that Nintendo's mistake with the GCN was a failure to truly differentiate it to the PS2, as we know Nintendo did attempt to differentiate the GCN via GBA connectivity, but this feature was rarely supported in games, probably because consumers needed to own both a GBA and GCN to take advantage of the features.

With the drastic differences in the Revolution controller, Nintendo's differentiation strategy is certainly more dominant coming into the next generation.

Regarding the lack of a worldwide launch, this news is perhaps not completely surprising from an Australian perspective because as the Xbox 360 launch illustrated, Australia was not apart of the worldwide launch anyway, and the PS3 launch's success remains to be seen.

Nonetheless, the Revolution is still expected to launch in November in the US, with an Australian release likely to occur early 2007 (perhaps March - May?) And the possibility of a December PAL launch is still there.


Source: IGN



Update 31/3/06

It seems the original stories regarding an unlikely worldwide launch were taken out of context and thus a worldwide launch of the console is still possible.

A Nintendo spokesperson had this to say, "What he’s actually saying is that we’re not holding a worldwide launch just because everyone else is doing one too. It’s just another re-iteration of the fact that we’re not looking at what Sony or Microsoft are doing".

Source: MCV

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