| mrstickball said: I think part of the issue is that the Wii has fragmented the gamer base into 2 categories: The HD base, and the Wii base. Never before has there been such a fragmentation. Last generation, there was a pretty clear choice - You had the PS2 for any project, and it was near-assured to garner huge sales. And then there was the GC and Xbox as 2nd-tier products, multi-plat games, or moneyhatting situations that could give increased profitability. Not so with the Wii/HD comparison. It's a catch 22: Spend tons of cash on a blockbuster HD game and it either does great, and makes tons of cash...Or does OK and hurts (ala Haze or Lair). The other option is the Wii, which has seen horrible returns for some games..Works for casual games, but that also fragments your work force - Few games seem broad success between all 3 platforms. Madden would be a great example of this...Despite the huge install base of the Wii, Madden sales have been nothing short of abysmal given the install base. Part of it is the developers fault, part of it is the HW manufacturers fault - and all of them. No one is without blame. Nintendo put out trashy hardware that fragmented the abilities of developers, while the HD manufacturers put out systems that exponentially increased costs past what may be viable for the average game. |
I can't fault Nintendo. They had no 3rd party support prior to Wii and they made a console that suited them best. Would HD graphics really improve a Mario, Kirby, Mario Kart, or even Brawl? Zelda maybe if it's not toon Link. Really all HD would have done is create necessary cost factors for Nintendo. Wii was a huge risk, if it failed to catch on then the cost of making HD games on their own 3rd place console would have killed them too.
Nintendo, Sega IPs and many other games look great on Wii. Sure they look a little better in HD but not enough to justify the development cost difference.
The fact that Western devs are fixated on realism to the extend they are willing to bankrupt themselves for them is their own stupid fault, not Nintendo's.
