@OP
Nintendo opted to say out of the 720+/ip due to costs to the consumer and costs to the developer. It's not a linear cost upgrade to produce HD games. Both sides suffer from the extra costs. Increased hardware, increased increased software. Increased development costs and increased development.
As time goes by these costs decrease(don't forget the GC was 480p while the other 2 were not). Memory becomes cheaper, middle ware get's developed to reduce development time. As leet gamer said it is getting cheaper.
Nintendo will maintain current mass user graphics. So once the HD TV(not counting the early adopters like hardcore gamers) Nintendo will keep up.
The biggest hurdle Nintendo faces with the next gen isn't graphics. It's the CPU. The Gecko/Broadway is a PPC. As far as I know the PPC is not currently being tuned for multicore. Next gen this will be important for developers. It's an easy pass this gen since most PC don't rely on it, but in a few more years even PC games are going to start required multi core cpu. Once the 4+ cores start becoming common anyway.
Squilliam: On Vgcharts its a commonly accepted practice to twist the bounds of plausibility in order to support your argument or agenda so I think its pretty cool that this gives me the precedent to say whatever I damn well please.
