Nintendo’s Revolution is Steam-powered

What does the partnership mean? :: April 1st, 2006 :: General :: 23 Responses

The Nintendo Revolution is proudly heralded as a disruptive technology.

Nintendo and Valve have announced a partnership covering the digital distribution of games for the Revolution’s ‘Virtual Console’, and the provision of a large number of back-catalogue titles for the PC, both through Steam.

“Nintendo’s highly successful market strategy has always been based around innovative and disruptive technologies. Steam provides both of these qualities, and we are delighted to today announce a partnership between Nintendo Co.,Ltd and Valve Software LLC for the use of the Steam network in the upcoming ‘Virtual Console’ for the Nintendo Revolution”, said Nintendo of America spokesperson Joe Kerr.

“As well as providing the complete Nintendo back catalogue and selected Sega titles for download, our new partnership extends into the personal computer space, with a selection of games being made available for the ‘Windows’, ‘Linux’ and ‘Mac OS X’ platforms through the established Steam service as provided by Valve to their customers today.”

This is the big one, no doubt about it. The adoption of Steam by an industry giant and its entry into the console market is an enormous step toward the widespread acceptance of digital distribution, not to mention a nice thing to put on your corporate CV. The press release also heavily implies the release of Steam for the ‘other’ PC platforms, something that Red Orchestra and Darwinia fans have been pining after ever since their games were released. Just don’t get your hopes up for Source to be ported too.

Overall though, the press release is raising questions. Exactly what difference will this announcement make for Steam on the PC? What Nintendo games will be released for it? How will Nintendo implement Steam on a console, and what features will they use? Will the console and PC implementations connect to each other? I’m sure anyone with a Nintendo console could come up with more issues still.

Perhaps E3 will bring answers, but knowing Nintendo we will have to wait until much closer to the Revolution’s “later half of 2006” release date to hear anything substantial.

Tags: fake, lol

23 Responses to this post:

Comments

April 1st, 2006 at 9:38 am ::
wizpig64 Says:

*Reads title*

— Yaay! It’s finally been confirmed!
— Zomg, I can play HL on Revo/Mario on PC maybe?!?!?1

*Reads article*

— Yay, my assumptions were mostly correct/mentioned! Kudos for me!
— *Imagines xStream company’s facial expressions*
April 1st, 2006 at 10:32 am ::
Andy Simpson Says:

*Looks at the date*

Hmm.
April 1st, 2006 at 10:50 pm ::
Tom Edwards Says:

Only one victim. Better than none! 😉
April 1st, 2006 at 11:38 pm ::
DiSTuRbEd Says:

LOL Tom I must say this is the best April Fools joke I’ve seen soo far. Nice job!
April 2nd, 2006 at 7:51 am ::
wizpig64 Says:

meh, i thought about it, but i didnt want to dissapoint myself :D. plus there was no source, so that got me double suspicious >_>;
April 2nd, 2006 at 9:26 am ::
Film11 Says:

Oh lawd, I’ll admit it I was fooled, until I read the comments 😛

You sly dog, you!
April 2nd, 2006 at 12:21 pm ::
Andy Simpson Says:

Heh, I am very disappointed it is a joke, it would be rather cool!
April 2nd, 2006 at 2:05 pm ::
Trigger- Says:

lmao i feel dumb,
i picked out all the rest of the april fools joke right off the hop. It would be pretty kool though if they did get a deal such as this.
April 2nd, 2006 at 9:00 pm ::
wizpig64 Says:

Honestly you did a really good job, that’s exactly what nintendo would have said!

plus, its around E3 time.
April 3rd, 2006 at 4:00 pm ::
Ne0nguy Says:

Does this mean ther is a possibility of playing CS 1.6 on the Nintendo DS?
April 3rd, 2006 at 4:01 pm ::
Ne0nguy Says:

[sighs]
April 3rd, 2006 at 4:04 pm ::
Ne0nguy Says:

I wonder how many ppl got exited by this and put a link to this article on their site lol
April 3rd, 2006 at 5:04 pm ::
Cargo Cult Says:

Y’bastard – nearly had me fooled! 😛

(Hmm… Maybe if I sent a link to some friends… 😉 )
April 4th, 2006 at 5:08 am ::
ironclad Says:

i got excited, linked it on a forum. It was only like a week ago that doug lombardi(sp?) was going to announcement about source coming to the next generation consoles. I think source, or source 2, would go really well with the revoloution’s controls.
April 4th, 2006 at 8:49 am ::
wizpig64 Says:

Isn’t source on the X-Box already?
April 4th, 2006 at 3:18 pm ::
ironclad Says:

Yeah, but that isn’t next generation.
April 6th, 2006 at 11:10 am ::
wizpig64 Says:

But, but… it’s before next gen. And the next gen system can run the current gen version technically…. Meh, can’t wait until I can play Metriod Prime: Source!
April 7th, 2006 at 9:15 pm ::
samdude9 Says:

Cry cry cry!
COMPLETELY fooled!
I was about to start saving for preorder!
April 14th, 2006 at 4:13 pm ::
Tom Edwards Says:

And people continue to fall for it…
April 14th, 2006 at 9:47 pm ::
Dawd Says:

rofl.. my friend is like.. THE NINTENDO REVOLUTION WILL USE STEAM!!!!

– hes a believer of the actual revolution.. the one that has been mythified…

it took me 30 seconds to click something and see “April fools”

The Steam Review