Will Nintendo ever catch up in graphics and hardware?

[thekitchensink]

Million said:

thekitchensink said:

RolStoppable said:
SNES, Nintendo 64, Gamecube.

For the future: When they need to because the market demands it. Unlikely though, most people seem to be already satisfied with sixth generation graphics.

Not to mention that the DS and GBA were/are the most powerful handhelds available at the time of their respective launches.

 

Nintendo was on the brink of being forced out of making consoles, SEGA-style, and they couldn't afford to blow billions of dollars on a loss-leading strategy when they didn't know how popular the system would be.  That's the only reason Wii isn't in the same realm of graphical power as the PS3 and 360.

 

Like Rol said, Gamecube was roughly as powerful as Xbox and much more so than PS2 and Dreamcast, the N64 was the most powerful of its generation, and so was the SNES.

I don't think Histroical trends are going to be of much use , the nature of gaming has raidcaly changed , it'll be more evident when the new generation starts.

True that.  However, even now it wouldn't be dramatically expensive to make something that's considerably more powerful than either a 360 or a PS3 (as evidenced by the jaw-dropping computers you can build for only a few hundred), so even if they don't break the bank, as it were, they could easily make a reasonably-priced machine in five or six years that was several leaps beyond what this gen can do.  Combine that with the fact that Microsoft and Sony definitely won't want to go with the loss-leading strategy again, and I think that (if indeed we do see new 'traditional' consoles) everyone will be relatively equal like they were last gen.