Nintendo Co. Ltd. will build a parental control system into its upcoming next-generation game console, it said Wednesday.
The system will work with the age-rating already assigned to video games in many markets and allow parents to set the new console, code-named Revolution, to only play games with certain ratings. To work the rating data will need to be recorded into data on the game disc.
In the U.S. there are six ratings levels defined by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB): EC (early childhood); E (everyone); E10+ (everyone 10 years of age and older); T (teen); M (mature) and A (adult).
Nintendo’s Revolution is due for launch sometime in 2006. An early model of the console was first revealed in May this year. It’s based on an IBM Corp. PowerPC processor and a graphics chip from ATI Technologies Inc. The console mock-ups shown to date are the size of about three CD cases stacked together.
At this year’s Tokyo Game Show the controllers for the console were first shown. They are wireless models that break away from the basic design used by many game-makers until now and look a little like a television remote control.
The Revolution will be the second or third of three upcoming new consoles to hit the market. The first will be Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360, which will go on sale in the U.S., Europe and Japan over the next month. Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.’s PlayStation 3 is due sometime in the first half of next year.
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