Harrison touches on subjects ranging from the Revolution's power to a possible Play-Yan pack-in with the Micro...

In an interview with Gamespot, Nintendo Vice President George Harrison was asked a number of questions, most centering around the presentation of Nintendo's new upcoming console and how it projected an image conflicting with the ones adopted by Nintendo's competitors. Harrison, to his credit, gave succint and confident answers...but sorry folks, nothing tremendous was revealed that hasn't already been reported many times over.

However, Harrison's responses still shed a bit of light on several key areas. Namely, he stated firmly that the Revolution would offer a powerful hardware setup, going as far as to say that "Revolution I think will have really no problem standing up to [the PS3 and XBOX 360]." He also served a reminder that "we [Nintendo] haven't released any of the technical specs. We're working with IBM and ATI, so certainly all the capability that we need is there right in our development partners." He further reiterated that balance between impressive performance and economic reality (not making hardware prohibitively expensive to develop for) was a core hardware design principle, that it was an important strategic decision to have hardware easier and cheaper to develop for compared to the competition.

Harrison also made several comments on the developing wireless infrastructure the Revolution will be poised to utilize. Specifically, Nintendo still has not reached concrete decisions on a pricing structure (if any) that would be put in place for the downloadable games service but they are adamant that online access through first party games would all be free to the gamer. He also noted that third-party pricing strategy would be entirely up to themselves: whether or not to charge for their online Revolution games or to charge for downloadable third party content and older games.

On the Gameboy Micro, Harrison gushed that even though its screen (which he also confirmed to be developed by Sharp) is even smaller than the GBA SP's (2" compared to 2.5"), it allows a brightness and clarity that would have to be seen to be appreciated. In terms of pricing for the unit's anticipated Fall rollout, Harrison was noncommittal but did offer a juicy tidbit regarding potential pack-in ideas or subsequent relevant product introductions that were being kicked around at Nintendo Headquarters. An excerpt:

"We're also looking at what the price and bundle combination might be for the fall. One of the things that they've launched in Japan that we're considering is--it's called the Play-Yan and it allows you to play MP3 music or MP4 video files in your Game Boy. We're trying to see how that's doing and if that makes sense to bring out as a companion to this."

The Play-Yan, for readers that don't recall, is Nintendo of Japan's GBA and DS-compatible adapter that would enable playback of mp3 music and movies on those portable devices. Although the peripheral (conveniently shaped like a GBA cartridge) has been available in Japan from Nintendo's website for months, its appearance in western markets has yet to be confirmed.

The interview is a fairly comprehensive one, and worth a read. You can find it here.