Actually, quite a lot of Xbox games ran at that resolution, including Enter the Matrix, Soul Calibur 2, True Crime, Freedom Fighters, THUG and X-men Legends.

Yes, they can update the firmware to unlock 720p. I've always said it. And yes, they can go back to 480p in menus without problem. The GPU should have the needed pixel fillrate and the GPU has access to the main GDDR3 RAM, so it could use it as framebuffer... that in case the eDRAM is just 3MB RAM like the GC, which most people have assumed it is without even looking a die shot or anything.

But this is all rumors, remember that. And just for the records, remember that at first Xbox 360 didn't support 1080p and then was added with a firmware update.

It would be cool if they allowed you to get updates for old games so they could support 720p. Is that possible? I know that mario strikers charged gets updates.

 It may be possible, but I'm puzzled as to why it's worthwhile. Jacking up the res to 720 is going to mean sacrifices to other visual attributes, like framerate or geometry complexity. Why increase resolution and not improve the visuals at 480p?

Imo the Wii is powerful enough to do 720p without sacrificing anything. People really underestimates the wii power. Just because it gets all of these ps2 ports that look really bad doesn't mean the wii can't do anything graphically amazing. The framerate won't be hindered if they develop it right. Even if the framerate is hindered we don't need 60fps for every game. I would be happy with a 40 or even a 30. The wii could produce amazing graphics its just developers are too lazy. 720p would at most push the wii more to its limits. Saying that this would cause obstructions to the geometry and framerate is highly underestimating the wiis power. This would push the wii a alot but not enought to cause significant disability in the other graphical properties.

 The hardware is very much capable of producing 720p resolution. The only thing stopping a game from using it is Nintendo currently. So it is possible if a developer can convince Nintendo to let that functionality be used.

2 problems.

A) IIRC, the Wii is hardware-locked at 640x480 or 720x480, depending on your settings (Nintendo did this themselves)

B) The 3mb Frame Buffer that is physically a part of the gpu itself would hinder the functionality of the hardware, if it's even capable of functioning at such a resolution (IIRC the PS2 and xbox use the system memory itself for the frame buffer, while it's a stand-alone piece of memory on the gamecube/wii gpu designs).

hypothetically, say there was a wii update that unlocked a 720p option. If you selected that, then played a game that doesnt go to 720p, would it upscale the game?
or would it not work?
or would it just play at 480p?

A)If that is so why do the dev kits support 720p.

B) Fazz said that you may be able to use the gddr3 ram.