Nintendo's Controlling Influence

In a Japanese press conference yesterday, Nintendo president Saturo Iwata gave us a few more tidbits about the Revolution, as well as more news on how the company's latest titles are doing.
Flanked by Shigeru Miyamoto, Iwata-san returned to his mission statement of bringing the simplicity and fun back to gaming, promising that the controller wouldn't be too intimidating for gamers old and new, and that it'd be wireless - sort of what we knew already, but interesting nonetheless. It seems, however, that a lot of time is going into developing it, with Iwata promising that we will be "surprised by the Revolution's controller." A touch screen, maybe? It'd make sense...







Talking of touch-screen magic, the DS has been a rampant success with Nintendogs, the tamagochi-esque dog simulator, being the DS' greatest asset, having a unisex appeal to Japanese gamers (40 percent going to female gamers) and thus flying off the shelves - could Iwata have been right to keep it simple?
The Revolution itself will allow gamers to play all GameCube games with all peripherals - those DK Bongos and Wavebirds will be fully operational - and we wouldn't be surprised if some sort of SNES controller á la the japan-only Hori (SNES-shaped one) is released to coincide with the Revolution.

On the subject of oldschool games, the internal memory of the Revolution at 512mbs will allow gamers to save their back catalogue onto the system, and if that space isn't enough, take the games onto SD Cards and save them onto their PC - could this be the end for the Nintendo emulation scene?

We're still waiting for the physical details of the Revolution's controller (it's currently undergoing testing and experimentation as we reported yesterday, and any actual games announcements. Iwata's promising it to be a "virtual console," less powerful but more fun (apparently), and will be announcing more as the year trundles along.