First off, the Dolphin's specs!

LOS ANGELES--May 12, 1999--Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. and Nintendo today announced that they have agreed to a comprehensive collaboration in the area of digitally networked home electronics.

Thanks to recent developments in digital networking technologies, consumers will soon be able to enjoy a range of new services based on the convergence of technologies for broadcasting, telecommunications and storage media. Developments have made it possible to inexpensively provide advanced image data service using high performance computer graphics.

Achieving sales that lead the industry worldwide, Nintendo has expanded its game machine business aggressively, supplying family-use computers, primarily in Japan, as well as dedicated game machines that run ROM-cassette media. By utilizing highly advanced computer graphics, large-capacity data storage recording media and networking capabilities, Nintendo is pushing ahead to pioneer entirely new worlds of games and related services.

Matsushita has been at the forefront in the development and introduction of digital products, like DVD players, digital TV set-top boxes, digital video cameras and digital cellular phones as well as telecommunications and broadcast systems, that will bring about the realization of a digitally networked society. In addition, it has aggressively promoted technical collaboration with some of the world's most advanced information-technology companies.

Based on their long business relationship, Nintendo and Matsushita engaged in an exchange of views on approaches to the most appropriate way to realize the digitally networked society concept. As a result of this exchange, the two companies have now agreed to wide-ranging collaboration in the digital network home electronics area based on the DVD platform, which respects the copyright protection of content creators and whose market penetration is expected to grow to 60 million units by the year 2000.

The agreement covers the following points:

- Matsushita will develop and supply the DVD media and the drive devices for the next-generation Nintendo game machine.

- The two companies will collaborate on convergence products that incorporate next-generation game machine and Digital audio-video technologies.

- The companies will pursue future applications of digital network-related products and services.

Game machines-based on DVD media will expand the DVD world by enabling us to enjoy movies and games in portable DVD players and DVD home theaters, and will open the way to new DVD applications. This will also encourage the development of new game titles that make full use of new graphics engines for next-generation games.

In Japan, Matsushita has promoted its comprehensive Home Information Infrastructure (HII) concept as a model for the digital networking society of the 21st century. With the addition of game entertainment and network functions to DVD-based products, the HII concept is further enhanced to include the ability to distribute and receive games, music, images and other media.

Through this collaboration, both Nintendo and Matsushita expect to accelerate development of "Digital Network Home Electronics" solutions and expand their business operations to further contribute to society.

The Outline of Nintendo's Next Game Machine With the 2000's in its perspective, we have gathered the world best technologies for designing Nintendo's next generation machine. Here is the outline :

CPU - IBM Custom Processor (Extension of Power PC Architecture)
- 400MHz Clock Speed * Semiconductor Process 0.18 micron Copper Technology

Graphics - Full-Custom Chip jointly designed with ArtX, Inc. in the U.S.
- 200 MHz Clock Speed
- Semiconductor Process 0.18 micron Embedded DRAM
Technology

System Memory
- High Speed DRAM Technology
- Memory Bandwidth - 3.2GB/second

Software Medium
- DVD Medium with Matsushita's DVD Technology
- Enhanced Counterfeit Protection

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

    Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (NYSE: MC) is one of the world's leading developer and producers of digital electronic products for the home, the office, and in between. Based in Osaka, Japan, it recorded annual sales of 7,890.7 billion yen (US$59.8billion) in the fiscal year ended March 31, 1998. Best known for the Panasonic brand name, the company also sells products under the Technics, Quasar, and National brands around the world. For information on Panasonic and Matsushita visit our Web site at www.panasonic.com. Nintendo Co., Ltd.

    Nintendo Co., Ltd. of Kyoto, Japan, is the acknowledged worldwide leader in the creation of interactive entertainment. To date, Nintendo has sold more than one billion video games worldwide, and has created such industry icons as Mario and Donkey Kong and franchises like The Legend of Zelda and Pokemon. Nintendo manufactures and markets hardware and software for its popular home video game systems, including the Nintendo 64 and the Game Boy - the world's best-selling video game system.

Now, the alliances...
With the $1 billion deal between Nintendo and IBM, IBM will produce a customized "Gekko Processor" built off the PowerPC chip used before in the Apple, IBM, Motorola (AIM) alliance. The chip will not only be faster (in clock speed) than Sony's PlayStation 2, but should be cheaper, and produce more life-like images. While Nintendo plans to release their new system worldwide in 2000, Sony plans to release the PlayStation 2 later this year in Japan, and in Fall 2000 for the US. However, according to psx2hq.com, 70-80% of Sony's chips have been made faulty. Since they already invested more than a billion dollars in factories to produce the chip as planned, a delay could be holding up the PlayStation 2 (PS2). The Dolphin hardware will be able to play movies and music outr of the box, while the PS2 will play music, but not movies. The difference could mean a big deal when the products are both on the shelves.

ArtX (composed of many Silicon Graphics employees) will be designing the graphics chip. The graphics chip will be manufactured by NEC. This 200mhz graphics chip will be in the system, along with IBM's 400mhz "Gekko processor" with copper technology. Copper technology can only be used by IBM at this moment. Copper technology replaces the previous aluminum circuitry with cheaper, faster, copper circuitry.