Late Night Consoling

Please excuse the lenght of this post, but I refuse to put it in reply since traditionally it gets ignored when I do so.

Good God you people sicken me!

The president of Nintendo says something in an interview that describes the downfalls of mandatory HD gaming (that development costs and time will skyrocket – something we cannot afford in the industry as it is) and you erupt with a thousand different ways of saying Nintendo will not provide support for your fancy new TV, that they’ve lost touch with what people want and that they’ve now (and you’re certain of it THIS time, the other times you were just practicing) gone and put a foot in the grave. Then in the other breath you condemn them for saying that their new console looks sleek by claiming that they’re not making it for gamers your age anymore, but rather someone’s mother or interior decorator – completely ignoring the huge outcries gamers have made with regards to the Gamecube’s physical appearance and Nintendo’s subsequent alterations of their next system’s design.

No where has Nintendo claimed that their next system will not support HD resolutions, in fact it is quite the opposite. The very first piece of information we learned about the Revolution was that it would hook up to computer monitors. There would be no point in this unless the hardware (and subsequent game support) would be capable of rendering high resolution images. The Gamecube had a digital video port on the back of it, where you could plug your component cabling in, and there is a port on the back of the Revolution that looks nearly identical to this, suggesting that at least component cabling will be available for the system. The only thing that kept the Gamecube from rendering HD images was their 2MB frame/Z buffer (the system had ample bandwidth to push the image out through the digital port), which I would bet has been increased sufficiently to allow a HD image to be stored.

What Nintendo has constantly been saying about their next generation system is that they’re trying to reduce development cost and time, their next generation games would be unique and broaden the scope of gaming and that their system will be a natural fit in the living room. If they were to make HD games mandatory, they wouldn’t be able to reduce development costs sufficiently to make it a viable strategy. Their ability to make unique games and broaden the scope of gaming has already been proven with the success of the DS (see E3 2005), and if you’ve seen the system you would have to agree that its damn sexy – so I believe they’ve accomplished that goal admirably.

One more thing, can you people with enough disposable income to purchase a HD TV honestly tell me that during the ensuing video game availability slump that both Microsoft’s and Sony’s next systems are inevitably going to have (due to increased dev time etc.) that you wouldn’t be able to afford to pick up a Revolution? Nintendo has traditionally been at the front of pushing the graphical envelope, and for them to now say that their next system is focussing more on player interaction (both with the system and each other) rather than outdoing their competition graphically, you should not consider this an unwillingness on their part to compete (for lack of resources or drive or whatever – all of which are not true) but rather a desire to expand gaming. Don’t you want to be a part of that?

Nintendo:

"Satoru Iwata: It's questionable what the "horsepower" of the two other companies' consoles will be used for, such as fast calculations and high-definition resolution. Creating game software in high definition will require everything from the [graphic's] models to the background to be redone, and it will bloat up development costs. And yet, it has no use for people that aren't playing with a high-definition TV set. Game consoles are not an essential product in life, so we want to make ours as compact, thin, and as inexpensive as we can so that it won't be viewed with hostility by family members."

It looks to me like futher evidence of Nintendo not supporting HD in their next gen console or not having HD as a requirement.

I think this is absoloutely crazy talk - CRAZY TALK I say,........ - how is having HD "less fun" - higher resolution is better period.

Sure less people might have HD - but who cares if less people have HD - it's about your CUSTOMERS! - how many of THEM have a HD set?

A lot of non HD owners would never have bought the console anyhow - whereas a lot of the HD owners might have.