It was with joy we reported some days ago that the Revolution's download service would be free; a fact which turned out to be a downright lie, subsequent admissions from boss has revealed. It had been believed that the Nintendo back-catalogue - everything up to the - would be made available gratis over Ninty's service. Of course, this all turned out to be far too good to be true: Nintendo will be charging for use of the retro downloads service, we just don't know how or how much yet. NES, SNES, and N64 games will not be free, Iwata told the Japanese press, but special offers may make individual titles or portions of them available to tempt gamers.

Special download weekends are one consideration and Nintendo are also weighing-up the possibility of making retro titles available free to purchasers of brand-new Revolution games. The Revolution console will be backwards compatible with Cube titles, regardless. More news is expected on the exact specifics of this service before the end of 2005. In related news, Iwata did tell press that by the end of the year over 1000 hotspots around will support online gaming for the handheld. Design on the Revolution controller continues... more soon.

By Luke Guttridge

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  1. Guest Unregistered 4 years ago

    Sadly, I fear if Nintendo do not make at least a portion of the older games free, then the PS3 and X360 will outshine the Revolution.

    I doubt the system specs will be comparable with those of Sony and Microsoft's consoles - what then will make someone choose Revolution over the other two - apart from die-hard Zelda and Mario fans? Likewise what's stopping Sony from doing something similar?