This is a bad idea, I believe. I don't think third parties would get a strong hold on the Wii with this, and would likely lose the PS3/360 crowd in the process. They'd go for both, but end of with neither.

I'm not sure there IS a good solution to the Wii, particularly for Western third parties. I think many are stuck, not able to reasonably transfer the games they make over to the Wii (many of which rely heavily on technology and graphics to appeal to consumer. Rely on them, mind you).

It would make sense, anyway. Most of what happens on PS360 is not fundamentally impossible on Wii. Usually, it's just the graphics, rarely enough do developers really take advantage of the other technical capabilities of the PS360. Developing a scalable multiplatform engine could solve these problems

But the big western development houses like to be resource hogs. They like to make games that take advantage of powerful hardware, and to work in an environment without limits. However, the people saying the audiences are fundamentally different are right. People who want PS360 games buy them on their PS360, if they make PS360 type games for the Wii, they are going to fail, by and large.

It is not the case that a Wii game has to be casual or kiddy, but it does have to be different. Less focus on depth and cinematic experiences, more focus on fun. Simple mechanics that can be expanded upon, rather than complex worlds. This is why Japanese developers have been in the lead on the Wii from the start, and that trend is only growing more apparent.

I'm sad to say that you're probably right about Western third-parties. On the other hand, considering the industry trend, I can also see enough Western studios shutting down/cutting back to the point that only a sustainable number of games are produced, letting the survivors continue with their model. They'll be far fewer, of course, and you can kiss variety good-bye, but the niche will survive.

What I'm less certain about is the effect on Wii development. Will new, Wii/handheld focused studios begin to form in appreciable numbers here in the West? They'll have the experienced game makers to choose from (unfortunately), but will they have the necessary vision to succeed with last-gen (or worse) visuals? Essentially, can they toss away their crutch and learn to walk again?

I doubt it.

Good points all around. Im sure that any games made for anything next gen will be HD.  SD is singing its swan song, and only the die hard SDTVs that are still going will be around. I love my SDTV, mostly because it's older than some posters here.  I will love HDTV for the fact that I move about every year recently, so having a LIGHT TV will be nice. =)

Ultimately, for my HD gaming, I have my PC, so I dont feel inclined to get a HD console nor HDTV.

As for porting up, technically it makes sense in one aspect. You can have a Wii level of capability and a HD console one. You build models, etc until it reached the top of the limit for the Wii version, save a version of the file in a Wii Dev folder. Then keep building on it for the HD version and save a different version. It'd be like making a HD game with a checkpoint in it to match what the high end of the Wii is capable of. This is an idea borrowed from the process of 3d modeling and creating Normal maps.

Indeed lets compare the specs for World of Warcraft a 4 year old game, Half Life 2 Orange box a 4 year old game resold with its various expansions and add ons, and Left 4 Dead a new game built on the engine of a 4 year old game vs. games with current tech.

Fact is WoW and Half Life 2 made people replace hardware, wether it was a graphics card, more ram, or the whole computer when they came out. I know I replaced my laptop for WoW, despite my laptop running FFXI, which was my MMO at the time, pretty darn well. That does not sound like designed to run on older less powerful machines to me. WoW is not successful because of minimum system requirements, despite what many people would want you to think. If that where the case, wouldn't City of Heroes, Lineage II, RF Online, and a dozen other MMO's that share WoW's minimum specs be just as popular or heck, somewhat in the ballpark of WoW's numbers?

Lastly, Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2, both from Bliz, look like they are going to be breaking banks for system upgrades/new pcs when they come out.

*edit*Also, arent Fallout 3 & COD WaW currently outselling L4D?

Well, not really ...

World of Warcraft was far from being graphically impressive when it was first released, and would run quite well on a 3 year old PC in "unpopulated" areas. It was the popularity of World of Warcraft, and having 100+ people in a Zone, that caused people to upgrade their systems.

At the same time, even though Half Life 2 was released in 2004 it ran perfectly well on my system from 2002 which had a Geforce 4 in it. People did upgrade to play Half Life 2 because (unlike games like Crysis) scaled really well and the game was playable on modest hardware and took advantage of more powerful hardware.

You are not making much sense. First the Xbox 360, PS3, and the PC all have different architecture. This means that a developer has to spend time, money, and resources, people, to port the game to each platform succesfully.

The Wii, on the other hand, has the same architecture as the Xbox 360 making porting a lot eaiser. The Wii also has a large fanbase than the Xbox 360 and the PS3. Secondly, no westen third party developer will know how a quality game will sell on the Wii if they do not take the chance. Any game can fail to live up to expactations. This has been true for the NES, SNES, PSX, PS2, and the HD consoles. But developers did not use this as an excuse not to develop another game for those platforms. Nor did developers wait until a game, similar to the game that they were developing, to become successful on those platforms. Nor did they wait for third parties to start turning a profit. If this is the mentality of develpers then they'd never be successful and the video game industry would have crumbled a long time ago with other industries that suffered from this type of mentality.

One of the problems that is facing the Wii is that develpers and publishers set the budgets up to develop titles for the PS3 and the Xbox 360 while using the Wii to supplement their incomes. What happened is that the Wii succeeded inspite of develpers and publishers thinking that it would fail. Publishers and Developers saw the success and the success of the casual titles and began to go after that market at the expense of the core. When their casual titles failed in the market place, Instead of shouldering the blame for their shovelware. Publishers and developers blamed the Wii audience by saying they do not know what type of audience the Wii has even inspite of the sales of Nintendo's own core games and the core games' from Capcom.

There is a reason why Nintendo's games sale and a reason why Resident Evil titles sale on the Wii, Quality. Activision is the only company to have recently released a core title on the Wii but it was a gimeped version. Core gamers are Core gamers no matter what platfom they own and they will know which version is gimped before it is released and pass that information along. No core gamer while by a gimped version of a game nor will they by a buggy, unoptimized version of a game. Just look at how the Orange box sold on the PS3 for reference.

In closing, Developers and Publishers who want to be successful on the Wii are going to have to invest in the Wii and take the risk and release core games for the platform. Core gamers cannot exist without support.

" It's time for third parties to make Wii their lead platform "

LOL no.

You are one asinine fanboy.  You're post prior to this was bad ("SD will become the standard again"), but this is just bizarre.  The Wii and Xbox360 use disks that are the same size.  How are you linking Blu-Ray and the Xbox DVD? 

What's the deal?  Do you hate HD just because the Wii isn't HD?  So what is the "ideal preference" for game size?  Please, feel free to start making sense.

Thats silly, of coarse an empty MMO runs great, it's supposed to have 100+ people in zones and such, thats the point. If you can't run that then you need to upgrade. As for graphicaly impressive, it looked better then most of its contemporaries such as FFXI, and SWG, so I'm not sure what you are talking about. As for Half Life 2, most people I knew had to upgrade old computers to play, so if your old rig got you running perfectly then thats great, but not what I saw.