The graphical power of the Revolution is still a mystery, as Nintendo seem happy to prove gameplay is more important. But just how powerful will it be?

It may be suprising to read, but even developers don't have a good idea what the Revolution's graphics will be like - with many still working on incomplete Revolution hardware and "GameCube-based kits," according to IGN's newly launched Revolution portal. They spoke to anonymous major software houses which confirmed that developers are still lacking final specs for Revolution's ATI-developed graphics chip, codenamed Hollywood.

However, many third parties have been given a rough idea by Nintendo on the Revolution hardware and the console's audience, which will be strikingly different from Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's Playstation 3. What they've been hearing is that Nintendo's machine will simply not contain the same graphical horsepower as Nintendo are focused on the new gameplay experiences which can be found using the special controller.

An old quote from Nintendo stated the Revolution would be "two-to-three times more powerful than GameCube," though this was later retracted. But according to one anonymous developer, that statement isn't far from the truth:

"To be honest, it's not much more powerful than an Xbox. It's like a souped up Xbox," said a 'major third party source' to IGN. "But it's the controller that makes the difference and the controller is really nice."

Developers have said the Revolution will possibly have 128MBs of RAM, maybe less. One studio was quoted as saying it will have "the same [amount of RAM] as GameCube plus an extra 64MB of main RAM,", which would mean around triple the GameCube's memory, much less than the Xbox 360's 512MB, though it was also suggested developers could tap into Revolution's 512MBs of Flash memory.

Whatever can be said though, developers are definately working on the machine, with one anonymous 'major third party source' stating it had already experimented with the hardware and was now evaluating which games to work on for the platform. "I'm sure [Nintendo is] going to get a fair amount of support. Probably a lot of people will initially look at existing franchises and whether or not they can kind of do customized versions for Revolution using most of the assets they've got. But whether they'll say, "Okay, let's do something completely original for it," that's the other question because it could be quite expensive to do that. Not as expensive as doing a PS3 or Xbox 360 game. But if you're a third party and you want to do cross platform, if you're doing a game on 360 you can do it on PS3 or PC using the same assets and that does make it a bit easier."

It's worth remembering though, that until next May, we don't know anything for sure.