If Nintendo repeats the Wii hardware strategy ...

[Viper1]

Soundwave said:

Viper1 said:

The problem now is that your still have to release the game with 2 sets of game assets.   1 that can designed to work with the GPU upgrade and 1 lower quality set of assets that is designed to run on the base console.    Or you can take the risky route by requiring the GPU upgrade and leaving out the base console market entirely.

I'd agree it would be a problem, but lets be honest -- just about every Western developer does this today anyway with PC game releases.

What's more work for a developer -- having to hire a completely new dev team to make an inferior version of Call of Duty (for example) from scratch for Wii versus the PS3/360/PC versions ... or being able to use the higher end assets that you've already designed and have sitting there and then just having a couple of guys work in addition to the main team to downscale *existing* assets for the "base console"?

It's better than the alternative of not getting games like BioShock and Mass Effect and GTAIV and FFXIII and RE5 (whatever their future 720/PS4 equivalents are anyway) at all, or getting them but only getting the "butchered" versions.

I think developers would appreciate this approach actually.

I think you are forgetting about capacity of the medium.

Some PS3 games already approach the entire 50 GB capacity of a dual layer Blu-ray disc.    You are suggesting they find a way to put those assets and the higher quality assets all one disc?   Going the 2 disc route just upped the cost.  Releasing 2 seperate SKu's is even more expensive.