| zorg1000 said: So yesterday there was a thread asking if Wii was underpowered and I made one asking if PS3/360 were overpowered. Based off the responses I came to the conclusion that its a bit of both. Wii-a moderate boost over the actual Wii, the bare minimum to play HD games. Cost $299 and had an 8gb HDD, sold at a small profit. Still had motion controls as main feature. Just imagine games like Mario Galaxy, Skyward Sword and Metroid Prime 3 in HD. 360-same specs but delayed to holiday 2006, doing this causes the RROD fiasco to never happen. Games like Perfect Dark Zero and Kameo are instead late Xbox titles. Gears of War is main launch title. Costs $399 with 60gb HDD and sold at $50 loss PS3-ditches the Cell and uses DVD instead of Blu-Ray. DVD had only been mass market price for 5-6 years and people werent ready to upgrade yet. PS3 Slim could add Blu-Ray support. As for the Cell, they should have used a more cost friendly alternative on par with 360. Cost $399 with 60gb HDD and sold at $50 loss. This scenario would essentially be in terms of power, Wii=PS2, PS360=GC/Xbox. They would all benefit from this by Wii being strong enough to get competent multiplats, 360 wouldnt have the RROD and PS3 wouldnt have lost so much money. |
A moderate power boost on the Wii would not be enough to push HD meaningfully. Remember, the Wii was basically a souped up GC. That, and there was really no good way to introduce HD, anyway.
Gen 6: 480p: 20 million pixels per second for 60 FPS
Gen 7: 720p: 55 million pixels per second for 60 FPS
Gen 8: 1080p: 1.2 billion pixels per second for 60 FPS
The problem becomes obvious when you put things like this. A console does not jump two orders of magnitude in one generation--even obeying Moore's law, which we were long out of by this time, we wouldn't have even finished one order of magnitude's growth in a generation. But that's what pushing 1080p required. Even if you went from 720 as an intermediary (and that would have problems because 720p signals aren't commercially broadcast. There was no good way to make this transition, and really, Nintendo opting out of the nonsense with the Wii was just fine because it gave developers and consumers a chance to not adopt the expensive new thing.
And suprise suprise, the casual gaming audience isn't interested in spending great gobs of cash on an HDTV. They wanna swing a wiimote.
