Yeah, right. In Japan, HDTV's have a significant install base, but it doesn't seem to be helping HD Media or consoles so far. North America has 18% HDTV penetration as of the end of last year, we'll say up to 25% by the end of this year (the pricing is still non-mainstream, like it or not), and Europe's HDTV penetration, last I heard, was less than 10%. I don't see HDTV "skyrocketing" while you can get a good 32" SDTV for almost half the price of a new 27" HDTV, and while the prices will change, it WILL take time. And even when HDTV penetration hits 50% in North America (which I don't see before 2010 at earliest), that alone doesn't signify that they suddenly won't be interested in a console with a lot of good stuff to play on it. It's like telling people that their VHS tapes were completely useless when DVD came out, yes it started to take over, and YES, there WERE people who completely abandoned VHS and switched to DVD, but how many YEARS did that take? HDTV won't be important enough for the mainstream probably until near or at the end of the Wii's lifespan, which I think, as the thread is named, will probably be 2011, maybe 2012 if it can continue getting excellent games. The question is, is how well the Wii can keep going for the foreseen future? If the Wii can grab a significant majority of the casual gamer market (with the wiimote, media publicity and price tag it certainly can) as well as a fair share of the hardcore market (a small minority will buy it as their main console, and a fair-but-substantial base of 360/PS3 users will also own one as well, simply due to it's library) and suddenly you have a console that has an excellent shot of reaching 50 million before the end of it's life span. Maybe even 75 million. ;)
Nobody is crazy enough to accuse me of being sane.
