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Groucho on 17 November 2008
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scottie said:
lapsed_gamer said:
I think that it could be Nintendo first. When it finally comes time to drop the price I could see them adding a Wii HD at the same time (sort of like DS upgrades.) It would upscale current games and new games could either be Wii HD only or have more flexibility like PC games to run on different hardware.

 

Nintendo have never been first, except maybe the NES. The Wii was released last, despite the GC being on 1/5th the sales of the PS2

 

Nintendo hate generational changes, and have gone on record saying (not direct quotes, I'm paraphrasing)

It's unfair to customers to make them pay for a console too frequently

It's only people that are running at a loss or have low marketshare that force a generational change too early.

 

That's just it, though.  A "Wii HD" wouldn't be a generational change, just like the DSi or PSP-3000 aren't.  The PSP-3000 has 64MB of memory, whereas the PSP-1000 only had 32MB -- yet its basically the same machine.  An "upscaled" version of the Wii would allow developers to develop Wii games in much the same manner as PC games (scalable), except in a *much* more controlled environment.  You could always guarantee that every title supported the Wii SD, and yet allow Wii HD owners to have additional features, like better textures, or higher resolution.  The Wii DVD is just as capable as the X360 DVD -- there's certainly no need for a disc format change, for the extra data.

Throw in an internal HDD, or HDD expansion for the Wii HD, and voila -- the Wii's lifetime, in THIS generation, is extended by another 5 years, AND Nintendo sells half their Wii SD installed base (or more) all over again.