This is something that hasn't been talked about, but in the 80s when Betamax and VHS had a war going on and VHS won, Betamax still retained some market in several areas, it just lost on the consumer video market. Proof of this is that Sony haltd Betamax recorders production in 2002.

Ok now to my point, we know Nintendo is only interested in the video game market. Nintendo consoles don't even play DVD movies something considered a standard today. But even today Nintendo is having trouble with piracy, here in my country pirated Wii games are sold everywhere, something I haven't seen for any other Nintendo console ever.

Imagine the next generation of consoles, the Blu-Ray format is probably going to be used for the PS4 and X720 to retain the movie playback capabilities with the standard format of the time, but Nintendo isn't interested in that so it is logical that they would choose a format that has a high capacity while not being very easy to copy.

Why am I saying that HD-DVD won't be easy to copy? well because we all know that players/recorders won't be produced for the consumer market anymore, so it will be very hard to find the proper equipment to copy HD-DVD discs after this happens.

You can say "lightbleeder you're talking nonsense! Blu-Ray format can't be copied!" but can't it? When DVDs just came out it was hard to find pirate movies but now it is common to have a DVD recorder at home! So I'll give it some time to see the Blu-Ray piracy proliferate.

What do you think?  Would be smart for Nintendo to make this move? Even Microsoft could decide to enable HD-DVD playback on its next console only for games or drop Blu-Ray and focus on movie downloads!

Discuss... 

Thats an interesting idea. I don't think that Nintendo would do it, because it would probably raise the cost of their next console (they'd be basically the only ones buying it, so it would cost them to keep production lines open), but I definitely see where you're coming from and why they might consider it.

this was an interesting read. not sure it will happen though. it could be a way for toshiba to make some money back though.

no as the main corporations are using holo-discs for storage and that is anti-piracy as no pirate in their right mind would spend millions on a drive let alone a disc.

interesting idea, but it will never happen.

You will probably see DVD format in Wii2.

but you never know, Nintendo could use HD-DVD, and then DS2 can use Beta tape. ;)

the best anti-piracy move is just to make all games online. mandatory.

obviously, it has problems, but a solution along this line is probably more realistic than anything else we have right now.

Nintendo is near impossible to predict. I think they may try HD VMD just cause it would be cheapest (since it uses the red laser) and i'm guessing way more difficult to pirate. It would probably make backwards compatibility easier too. But hey its Nintendo, I wouldn't be suprised if they used small triangular pyramids that the Wii2 would eat like a Venus Fly trap and spit back out to change the game. It would have zero loading time, no memory cards, and impossible to pirate without a triangular pyramid burner.

 I also think Wii 2 would use the DVD format because it probably will be a little more powerful than PS360 and with that amount of power the 360 doesn't have any storage problems with its games. But piracy for DVD is too common and maybe Nintendo doesn't want to take that risk again, and HD-DVD could be a good solution for that.