I'm from Brazil and here the game consoles and TV sets cost very (and I said VERY) much than in the "first world countries".

Even with that issue I have an "HDTV ready" set and at a certain moment of my life I've had a Wii and a XBox 360.

Still that I've played my Wii day over day, while the XBox was left to dust, 'till the day I've sold it.

Playing my Wii on an "HDTV ready" or on an "HDTV" set isn't an issue for me, and I'm sure for most of people, judging by the fact my father comes to my room everytime I play my games and keep looking and claiming "wow, this tiny box is powerful", "this graphics are incredible" and things like this...

I just keep playing it :)

Note: I've opted for a plasma "HDTV ready" 42" over a LCD HDTV 32" because of two reasons... I've not seen any justificable difference on the image and 10 inch of screen is A LOT, and they cost about the same.

On the topic again, I don't expect a new Wii major "hardware inovation" less than 4 years ago...

Borkachev said: Going without HD support was a very wise decision. Nintendo didn't have strong 3rd party support for a whole decade, if Wii games would cost about the same as 360/PS3 games in development, Nintendo would have had next to none 3rd party games at launch and in the following months. Also, the price of the Wii would have been higher and most people would have to pay for a feature they couldn't use. Adding HD support--just HD--to a game would add virtually nothing to development costs. In a 3D game, it's a matter of tweaking a couple numbers in the code. What it would have cost Nintendo to add this ability to the hardware is another question, but I find it hard to believe it could have been much. Shams mentions limitations in the frame buffer and the RAMDAC - is that all that's holding it back? What would an upgrade to those features, plus maybe a little extra memory and such to handle the extra strain, have cost?

"Plus a little extra memory and such" is where the costs are "hidden," so to speak.  You don't just up the clock speed on the RAMDAC and add a little more framebuffer cache.  You need additional pipelines to push the pixels.  You need much more RAM to store high-resolution textures, and models with higher polygon counts.  You need more memory bandwidth to transfer data more rapidly.  You could do all these things to the Wii and still end up with a machine that can't match the 360 or PS3 in power.  What would be the point of that?

Development for HD does cost more -- you can't just flip the HD switch.  If you're going to render in HD, you need to spend more time on the world filling in all the extra details.  There wouldn't be much sense drawing Mario 64 in 1080p, would there?  Not without major texture and model upgrades there wouldn't.

Entroper said: Borkachev said: Going without HD support was a very wise decision. Nintendo didn't have strong 3rd party support for a whole decade, if Wii games would cost about the same as 360/PS3 games in development, Nintendo would have had next to none 3rd party games at launch and in the following months. Also, the price of the Wii would have been higher and most people would have to pay for a feature they couldn't use. Adding HD support--just HD--to a game would add virtually nothing to development costs. In a 3D game, it's a matter of tweaking a couple numbers in the code. What it would have cost Nintendo to add this ability to the hardware is another question, but I find it hard to believe it could have been much. Shams mentions limitations in the frame buffer and the RAMDAC - is that all that's holding it back? What would an upgrade to those features, plus maybe a little extra memory and such to handle the extra strain, have cost? "Plus a little extra memory and such" is where the costs are "hidden," so to speak. You don't just up the clock speed on the RAMDAC and add a little more framebuffer cache. You need additional pipelines to push the pixels. You need much more RAM to store high-resolution textures, and models with higher polygon counts. You need more memory bandwidth to transfer data more rapidly. You could do all these things to the Wii and still end up with a machine that can't match the 360 or PS3 in power. What would be the point of that? Development for HD does cost more -- you can't just flip the HD switch. If you're going to render in HD, you need to spend more time on the world filling in all the extra details. There wouldn't be much sense drawing Mario 64 in 1080p, would there? Not without major texture and model upgrades there wouldn't.

Okay, that's what was what I understood. I think we can all agree that Borkachev would be right if HD cost little or nothing to add... but that's not the case. Adding HD would have negatively affected the price point, and that's bad. 

if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

superchunk said: HD is already in that little gem. All they need to do is unlock it and pay royalties, the hardware is fully capable of 720p. I personally don't care. The games look good enough for me and this is only the 1st gen wii games. Many of which were actually built on the GC or PS2.

Damn it quoted the wrong thing from the right person. My point was to recommend you to re-revise your estimates by the year end :)  Wii to 15 mil, X360 to 12-13 mil and PS3 to 5-6 mil!

 

 :)

I think there would be. And to illustrate, here's a comparison of it running in 320*240 on N64 versus 480p on Wii. And there's a lot of room left for improvement.

For something more comparable to Wii's level of graphics, here's a link I've posted before: Kingdom Hearts 2 running in 720p.

This kind of HD, without ultra-detailed environments and textures, really is just a matter of "turning on a switch" for a developer. And it makes a big difference.


That's true, neither of us knows what it would actually have cost. But if you consider that the 360 is believed to cost around $300 to manufacture, I would think that Nintendo could have added just HD support for a lot less than that, or for the same cost have made something comparable on an overall graphical level (while taking a small loss and keeping the $250 price). Now, I know that the 360's price has seen the benefit of a year's worth of streamlining and cost-reduction, so they're not directly comparable. But on the other hand, the Wii had the advantage of launching a year later, and it's already got the same install base the 360 had when it got down to that cost. I think Nintendo would be in at least as good a position cost-wise at this point.


Keeping in mind that the HD support I was actually talking about would not increase developer costs, let's suppose instead that Wii had been a completely cutting-edge system graphically like its competitors. It still wouldn't have hurt its developer support. As you said, nobody was interested in developing for Wii until they saw how successful it was. While a few publishers might be working with the platform just because it's cheap, most are doing it because it's the most successful and has the brightest future. That wouldn't change if it were more powerful. And for every developer that welcomes Wii for the savings it offers (which brings us some cool risky games, but also a lot of crap and shoddy ports), there's another who doesn't want to touch it because it isn't exciting and impressive to work with. Seems to me the two groups are a trade-off.


They have the opportunity, but are they going to do it? I haven't heard anything (correct me if I'm wrong).

I beleive that the lack of HD helped the Wii a lot. Sony and Microsoft are in an arms race right now tryin g to make the bigger badder machine. They can do this and take the loss becuase other departments can make up those loses,. Nintendo onkly does games, so their games need to do well from the start. They also had problems adding HD and trying to compete with the big dogs. They weren't the most popular at the tiome, with the public and 3rd parties.

The solution: go cheaper. And it worked. Rather getting in an arms race Nintedo opted for cheaper and simpler. This has obvious substained their stance in the market and also allowed them to pursue the Blue Ocean statigy. HD won't come to the public's attention till about 2009 and won't bee accepted till 2010-2011. Why worry about it now.

I imagine you've played PC games long enough to have been dealing with resolution differences since before HDTV/SDTV was ever an issue. Those early 3D games looked like junk compared to what we've got now, but did you keep the resolution at 640x480 because it didn't make enough of a difference with the low poly counts and shallow textures? Of course not - you cranked it up as high as it could go, and it made it look like a whole new game. For that matter, why does anyone buy an HDTV at all? The difference in quality between an SD and HD broadcast is identical to the difference I'm saying the Wii should have, and everybody there agrees it's worthwhile.

Maybe you're just one of those people who isn't impressed by HD. But if you ask me, the higher resolution of PS3 and 360 is at least as much responsible for their improvement over past systems as their higher poly counts, better textures, and improved effects.

wow... wonderful responses. but looking back, I shouldn't have mentioned HD support. I only mentioned this because it's one of the features I noticed people want added the most.

I was just wondering how you guys thought nintendo could re-ignite sales if they were to experience a turn of fortunes in 2 years time.