Mod note:
This thread needs to become less aggressive and person-oriented.
- Gukumatz,
Game Room Moderator
Hilarious.
Look, so much of what you’re saying makes absolutely no sort of sense.
I’ve had a Wii since 2007, when HD wasn’t even on my radar because sets were still way above my price point. Now that I have an HD set, there’s no doubt that I would see some benefit if the Wii was HD-ready.
But it’s bananas to “demand” an HD upgrade, because the cost would not be justified by the benefit. I’ll look forward to the next gen Wii; that’s fine. But I don’t regret the purchase; the Wii offers more than an Xbox or PS3 for me. (In the sense that neither the PS or XBOX does anything that my PC doesn’t already do better and for less cash.)
I’m no “Nintendo fanboy”; the Wii is my first Nintendo purchase, and apart from arcade games and licensed versions on 8-bit consoles, I don’t really relate to Nintendo. However, the Wii is a really innovative product - innovative enough to overcome my entrenched resistance to console gaming, which (maybe ironically) owed a lot to the limitations of NTSC video. It overcame this resistance by bringing something new to the table, and also by being priced attractively.
It was a canny move for Nintendo - a radical departure from standard console controls might easily have been a huge flop - and it would have been much more risky to try to make the rest of the hardware bleeding edge and require a more significant initial investment. So they left the GPU arms race to the others and focused on a totally different path. It paid off in spades, and [Nintendo is still killing](Video Game Charts, Game Sales, Top Sellers, Game Data - VGChartz Totals) as far as sales go.
Now, I’m intrigued that Sony and MS are lining up to “Be Like Wii,” and look forward to playing with their implementations of motion controls. To be honest, the titles for these systems are more usually in line with the sort of games I’m traditionally attracted to. (However, the sort of games I’m more traditionally attracted to are still better on the PC, and I’m not in a hurry to throw down another $400 on a new, possibly redundant system. Realistically, I’ll probably just get the next-gen Wii when it comes out, because I can claim it’s for the whole family. 
)
Hi all. I pretty much never post here, but for once it’s a topic I know something about so I thought I’d throw in my two cents. I’m not really siding with one side or another… or at least, that’s not the plan, but I’ll write the post and see what happens.
We seem to be talking about a couple of different things, here. ‘HD’, in my understanding, refers to simply the resolution that the output of the console can handle. Then there’s the processing power (CPU and GPU) of the console’s guts. The 360 and the PS3 can output to higher resolutions than the Wii can, but can also do lots of internal things the Wii can’t do. In other words, porting an XBox 360 game to the Wii requires a lot to be downgraded besides the resolution.
For Nintendo to have released the Wii with the ability to output to higher resolutions would not have been very expensive to them. Beefing up the internals, however, would have been more expensive. So if we’re talking about cost to Nintendo, the answer depends on whether we’re talking about literal high-def output, or upgrading the guts of the console too (or instead).
I wanted to mention development costs of working on a high-def console (that is, the price it costs to make a game for the system), too. Outputting to a higher resolution doesn’t really have any impact on development costs. However, crucially, developing for a more powerful console like the PS3 doesn’t necessarily increase costs either. Indeed, there’s no shortage of cases where it decreases costs. I’m an independent developer, and the game I’m currently working on would be much easier to port to the PS3 or the 360 than the Wii. If I had a team of optimising programmers working for me it’d be a different matter, but (it currently looks like) I won’t have the time as a lone developer to do the low-level hacking to get my game to run on a slower platform. A bigger developer could do it easily, in this case, but I can’t.
Also, a comment on that screenshot comparing what I believe is Smash Brothers Brawl on the Wii, versus a similar screenshot on an emulator. To my eye it looks like that’s running at roughly twice the resolution (in both directions) or a bit more, but also, with pretty decent full-screen antialiasing (I would guess 4x?). That means that the screenshot on the right has to write around sixteen times more stuff to the framebuffer (video memory). They might also have forced features like per-pixel lighting too, but it’s not particularly evident in that screenshot so I’ll ignore that for the moment. So, relevant points here are:
- The Wii, obviously, can’t do the screenshot on the right.
- The Wii, with the ability to output high resolutions, also could in no way produce the image on the right. So it’s false to suggest that it would be trivial/cheap for Nintendo to have made the screenshot on the right a possibility for the Wii.
- Actually, with that size framebuffer, I wouldn’t be surprised if the 360 and the PS3 can’t handle it either. In my experience they get killed by fillrate issues long before they are outputting 720p at 4xFSAA - especially the PS3.
- The developers of Smash Brothers: Brawl were in no way involved with the development of the screenshot on the right. So as far as the developers are concerned, the graphics on the right come for free. It’s just that a console with a GPU that could push that, built in 2006, would have cost either Nintendo or the consumer quite a bit more.
Anyway, I’ve come this far, I suppose I’ll throw in some personal opinion too. 
I’m a huge indie nerd. My favourite games look like this, or this. Obviously, you’ll get no argument from me that high end graphics are required for a game to be good. I also don’t own a PS3 or a 360 - I own a gaming PC and a Wii. I’ve been a Nintendo fanboy for as long as I can remember. But, Nintendo’s attitude this generation bothers me, because what improved power (processing power, output resolution, or whatever else) gives is not the ability to make good games - as shown, it’s not required for that - what it gives to the developer is options. There are any number of great ideas for games that would work beautifully on any console from this generation. There are also great ideas for games that no current console has the power for. But, there are plenty that will fit on a PC, or a PS3, but not a Wii. Nintendo’s attitude this generation seems to be that they can make the kinds of games they want to make on their console, and making the kinds of games Nintendo likes to make should be enough for anyone. Obviously, from a business perspective, this is working really well for them, and I wouldn’t really argue that they should do differently. But it makes me sad to see the company who, in my childhood, inspired me to think of games as a means of artistic expression, seem to be turning their back on that.
That said, I think anyone who said four years ago that the Wii was stupid because it was a console with a gimmicky motion controller and hardware five years out of date… ought to admit that that is literally exactly what the 360 and the PS3 are right now.
Sorry for the bump, but I didn’t want to let this thread sink like it probably ought to without acknowledging what a great post that last was.
Thanks, Larry. Usually when I emerge from lurkerdom it’s to kill threads good and dead, and while this was no exception, it’s good to know someone read it at least. 
Utterly wrong. “Total annihilation”? If the Japanese PS3 and 360 sales were equalized, that would mean just 2 million less PS3s sold worldwide.
You’ve been proven wrong repeatedly. You keep saying that Nintendo can’t upgrade their hardware. And yet every other console has done so. You say that such an upgrade would require a complete overhaul of how games are developed. This has been proven wrong by showing that emulators, which by necessity cannot have software rewritten for them, pull it off perfectly fine.
All of your points have been refuted. And I say that as someone who doesn’t even own a console this cycle (or last, for that matter), and has no stake in either side. I only came into this thread because the title was intriguing.
As for the actual subject of the thread: Nintendo is just doing what they’ve always done. They only release hardware upgrades when sales start to go down, as a transitional device to get a little extra money while they are developing something else.
The colored Game Boy was to revitalize GB sales. The GB Pocket was a transition to the GB Color. The GBA XP was a transition to the DS. The DS lite was a transition to the DSi (although it took longer than usual, the point was to reduce the DS size so the i part would fit.) The only one that doesn’t quite fit is the DS XL, and even its purpose was to broaden the market to adults with larger hands, and to discourage people from seeking out the original DS for that purpose.
Nintendo is not going to add HD to their console because the hard core gamers, which are no longer their target audience, want it. The casual gamer either doesn’t care, or could not justify buying a new Wii just for that feature. While I don’t think there’s anyone out there as bad as pedescribe*, I do think there are people who can’t tell the difference unless you show them side by side.
The Wii just isn’t doing badly enough for Nintendo to change what they have always done.
*seriously–you can’t see that the one on left is much blurrier with a lot of jaggies on the slopes? I would actually suggest you get your eyes checked, as you are quite young. That’s not an insult: I am genuinely concerned. I know people who think SD looks better (I’m one of them for TV shows), but no one who can’t tell the difference who has normal vision.
The 360 was ignored in Japan from day one. If that didn’t happen, who knows what the numbers would have looked like with its one year head start.
No console has ever so radically changed the system specs in mid-generation and called it the same system. It’s never done and I don’t know why people are equating a smaller form factor with a complete overhaul of a system’s graphical capabilities. The last time that happened was the Sega 32X. And that flopped almost as hard as the Virtual Boy.
I said no such no thing.
No, they haven’t.
How is this different from every console ever? Hardware cycles have always been between 5-6 years when some new technology has matured enough to make it worthwhile to include in a mass-market device.
You’re conflating generational jump with transitional systems. The DS has gone through four transitions (DS, DS Lite, DSi, DSi XL) in its life, the same number as the PSP (PSP, PSP-2000, PSP-3000, PSP Go). Each transition does little more than add some basic functionality or slightly improve on some piece of the tech. The actual hardware specs are unchanged as the same games bought four years earlier still need to be supported today.
Again, this is what hardware makers do.
The Wii is winning. But more importantly, the Wii is profitable. And Nintendo’s de facto public face, Shigeru Miyamoto, loves it and is doing some of the best development work of his career. And their other development houses are putting out tons of well-reviewed (and best-selling) games by the truckfull. Why would they switch everything up now? It’s not time to make a hardware jump yet.
While I wouldn’t claim Nintendo hates it’s fans, they really don’t seem to very interested in fully supporting the Wii as a platform. Their support for third-party developers appears to be non existent. I can’t recall one excellent third-party game. There’s a few good ones, but they could be a lot better. Nintendo’s still making tons of money selling Wii harware, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to ask that they invest some of that money back into the platform. Maybe buy some of the more promising third-party developers and give them the support they need.
A Wii+ with a bigger hardrive could be nice. Right now WiiWare games are hamstrung by the small hardrive space. That’s the reason you won’t see Super Meat Boy on the Wii for example.
So? Thats a different argument and has nothing to do with your earlier statement. You claimed that the only thing keeping the PS3 on the market right now is its sales advantage over the 360 in Japan.
That’s objectively false. The Japanese gaming market isn’t that big and PS3 sales aren’t what they were in 2006.
That’s exactly my point. If Japan embraces the 360, Konami would announce that Metal Gear Solid 4 is no longer PS3 exclusive and Square Enix would announced Final Fantasy 13 for the 360 a lot sooner than they did. More PS3 holdouts would end up buying 360s and fewer PS3s would be sold worldwide.
It would have been a domino effect that would have resulted in the complete flopping of the PS3.
[QUOTE=Justin Bailey]
And Nintendo’s de facto public face, Shigeru Miyamoto, loves it and is doing some of the best development work of his career.
[/QUOTE]
Out of curiosity,which games do you have in mind here? (not trying to snark, just wondering)
Wii Sports, New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Super Mario Galaxy.
I’m really surprised you didn’t list Mario Kart Wii.
What about DKC Returns? Punch Out Wii?
I’ve said it a million times, but it always deserves repeating: Super Mario Galaxy is one of the best video games ever made. It has risen to #1 in my opinion.
You’re changing time frames again.
The statement that I called out was a claim concerning the current state of the PS3. The arguments you’ve brought up about the past, whether accurate or not (and I think they’re questionable), are irrelevant to that claim.
The PS3 is not currently entirely dependent on Japanese dislike of the 360.
Miyamoto himself had almost next to nothing to do with all those games. But I agree, Mario Kart Wii and Punch-Out!! are excellent. Haven’t played DKCR yet.
I changed nothing. My argument is that the PS3 is currently competetive because the 360 wasn’t (and still hasn’t been) embraced in Japan. If it had been, everything would be different.
The N64’s ram upgrade was a larger change than simply adding HD output to the Wii would be. The DSi is a **much **larger upgrade than just adding HD output to the Wii would be. It has a much faster CPU, four times the ram, a camera, on-board storage and SDHC slot, and no GBA slot. Which was used for a handful of addons for some DS games wrecking compatibility with those games. I haven’t followed the PSP but I’m pretty sure it got a large performance upgrade in one of its iterations as well. And there’s the Sega CD, the obvious rebut to your 32X comment.
If all they did was add HD output(and the rather slight buff to the graphics system that would be required to ensure no slowdown when using it) there would be no compatibility issues unless the developer of a game specifically tried to force a compatibility mismatch for some bizarre reason. Newer games could just as easily be rendered at lower resolutions as older games could be at higher resolutions. The only possible problem would come with 2d games/2d elements in a game and so long as the developers take that into account it is very close to trivial to work around and in many cases wouldn’t require any additional work.
I got an N64 at launch, the ram upgrade slot was always there and always planned for.
All of the changes to the DSi aren’t used for in-game processing though. Those are all extras that run outside of gameplay except for a few “DSi-enhanced” games.
Did an HDTV kill your dog or something? These arguments are nonsensical. Murrow coulda done the same with a radio broadcast.
Some of the first HDTVs were crappy, I’ll give you that, but a Blu-Ray of The Dark Knight on my roommate’s 52" widescreen HDTV is truly beautiful. To act like there’s not much difference between that and an SD broadcast is just silly. In fact, I would argue that, paired with the larger sizes of TV that are becoming commonplace, SD->HD is just as significant a step at Black& White->color.
Eh. Typically the larger the TV the further back you sit, reducing the resolution’s effectiveness. And then there’s the law of diminishing returns–you can tell a color vs black & white image at any distance; you can’t with HD.