Around 20 titles at Rev launch

Nintendo's Revolution console will be supported by around 20 software titles when it launches later this year, with a third of them being first-party games, according to Nintendo of America senior VP George Harrison.

Speaking in an interview with US magazine Game Informer, Harrison, who heads up NOA's marketing and corporate communications, emphasised the importance of making an impact with software early in the lifespan of the console.

The company has learned lessons from the success of Sony's PS2 and the difficulties faced by GameCube, he said, commenting that "you really make your reputation in the first year."

"You've got to deliver software, not just at launch, but you've got to deliver software in the first six to nine months after launch," he explained. "In GameCube, we didn't have that, we had kind of a drought for six months after it launched. By that time your reputation starts to solidify and it's hard to reverse that after a while."

While Nintendo has traditionally been the most important supplier of software for its own consoles, the company's emphasis on the speed and low cost of development for the Revolution seems to have paid off to some extent, if Harrison's claim that two thirds of the titles launched with the system will be third-party is correct.

Harrison also commented in the interview that the company was considering new ways of marketing the console, stating that showing gameplay videos will probably be insufficient. Nintendo's Revolution advertising may instead focus on showing gamers actually using the different functionality of the controller.