Read Reggie on Revolution plans, the "unnecessary fluff" of Revolution's competitors and the current trend of "Mario milking".

EGM, part of the 1UP.com network, recently interviewed Reggie on Nintendo's upcoming plans. Starting off with Revolution and its online plans, he commented that Nintendo's console would be totally optimised for online play. "There's going to be no subscription fee; we're not looking at this as a profit-driven program. We're looking at it as a way to bring more enjoyment and satisfaction to the game."

Reggie says he wants to drive up the participation rate for online play, citing the 15 percent of gamers who currently play games online as "pretty small". What he wanted to see for titles like Mario Kart, would be "80, 90, near 100 percent," of gamers who really enjoyed the title feeling they want to play it online.

Talking about the Cube, he highlighted not only Zelda, but also the four new Mario titles on the way: Baseball, Party 7, Strikers and the Mario-themed Dance Dance Revolution. "I think potentially the core gamer might scoff at a game like Mario Party 7, but the fact is we sold over half a million units so far on Mario Party 6. It's a game that has a tremendous following."

Next generation however, he said that as there would be a number of new first-party franchises to look forward to, there would probably be less of the milking of Mario, where he appears in loads of Mario-themed games. At the same time, a proper Mario platformer, Metroid, Zelda, Smash Bros., and many more classic franchises would of course also be appearing, with Smash Bros. currently being worked upon as a wireless Internet-enabled game.

Third-party wise, Reggie said he'd had oppurtunities to sit down with a number of key third-party publishers and share the innovation of the Revolution controller with them, and that "their eyes truly lit up" imagining what would be possible.

He said he'd also spent "quality time" with the top five Western publishers, who all appreciate the innovation Nintendo will bring to the market with Revolution. Whether this means he shouted at them until they agreed to support it we aren't sure, but his message was there would be a "huge level of support" from third party developers. And they would be getting early looks at the innovation of Revolution so they would be ready to work on it.

Price-wise, Reggie hyped up that Revolution's competitors, the PS3 and Xbox 360, would be highly priced. The Revolution's price meanwhile would be "substantially lower than the competition, because we don't have all of that added fluff that a gamer, frankly, doesn't [need]." But what if the gamer does what the 'fluff' of the Revolution's competitors? He said he believed "center-of-the-plate gaming strategy is going to make sense in this marketplace. Especially when it's supported with fantastic software."

With the new Game Boy Micro, Reggie says Nintendo are targeting ultimate portability for consumers in their early to mid-teens. Speaking of how well he thinks they will sell, he said "The retailers have been all over it... the belief is that it's going to be the hot Christmas item this year. Especially when we announce the pricing."

And the Micro won't be stealing any of the limelight away from the DS. Not with Mario Kart, Metroid Prime: Hunters, Nintendogs, new system colours, and "maybe some other pieces of innovation that we do." Concluding the interview, he promised Nintendo have initiatives for the Cube led by Zelda, initiatives for SP; and initiatives for DS. "And that's our plan," he said.