Why the Wii isn't HD

[NJ5]

Onimusha12 said:

DMeisterJ said:
I don't understand this at all.

All of these excuses could have been used in the jump from Cartridges to CD.

Whether or not the industry or developers were "ready" is irrelevant. Innovation waits for no one.

If it were up to Nintendo, we'd still be using cartridges. Good thing that Sony/Saturn pushed CD technology onto developers. Look at the DS, we're in 2008 and it's still on cartridges (and doing awesome I might add). Does anyone think that DS2 or whatever will be CD Based? No. But if PSP had won, we'd definitely be seeing a disc version of a Nintendo handheld.

Nintendo is very happy taking safe bets and doing well in that, and the Wii is really the only departure from that.

Except CDs were more versatile and much cheaper than Cartridges. Nintendo didn't stick with Cartridges because the industry wasn't ready, they stuck with them out of stuborness and control over the medium their console used. Cartridges were harder to develop for, they were more expensive and they had less space. They had no advantages what-so-ever outside of Nintendo's control over the format. The situation of CD vs Cartridge couldn't be further from the current situation of HD vs SD.

It's laughable you would even try to compare these two situations completely out of context like this.

 

Thank you! I was cringing from reading DMJ's post and I'm glad that I didn't have to suffer through writing a reply myself.

Really DMeisterJ, that makes no sense at all. HappySqurriel's list makes all the sense though, and it explains many of the things which are happening in the industry (financial results, multi-platform games, sales, public perception...).

PS: The Wii is not SD, it's ED (Enhanced-definition). It uses progressive scan, 480p. SD is 480i/576i.