Nintendo to unveil Revolution at pre-E3 press briefing

Nintendo has announced that its next-generation console, codenamed Revolution, will be fully unveiled to the world - along with its software line-up - at a pre-E3 press briefing in Los Angeles next May.

The briefing, which is scheduled to take place on May 9 at 9.30am, will be held in Hollywood's Kodak Theatre - the same venue as the Academy Awards. In a statement, Nintendo promised that the event will "reveal all the incredible details about Nintendo's upcoming games and hardware, including our next home console."

Nintendo first showed off the case design of the Revolution and spoke about its extensive backwards compatibility capabilities at E3 last year. The firm then unveiled the innovative controller for the system, which tracks the hand movement of the player, at the Tokyo Game Show in September - but to date, no software for the console has been revealed.

It comes as no real surprise that Nintendo has chosen E3 2006, which will kick off the day after the press briefing, to showcase its new machine. Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz earlier this month, European marketing VP Jim Merrick echoed comments previously made to this site at E3 last year when he said: "I would be very disappointed if I went to E3 and didn't play Revolution games."

It also seems the console will be ready for show and tell in time, if rumours regarding its CPU, codenamed Broadway, are to be believed. According to US website RevoGaming, IBM has now finished work on the chip and has shown Nintendo a prototype - which Nintendo has in turn shown to selected developers. One source claims that it is a dual-core processor, but this has not been confirmed.