I was listening to All Things Considered (a news program on National Public Radio) and it had a piece on how watching TV is becoming something too tech savvy for the average consumer. Interesting listen, but It had a statistic in there that almost 25% of people in the US own an HD TV, but out of those only half of them are actually watching HD TV, the other half has no idea the difference, or what is necessary to actually get HD programming. They are just watching SD TV on their expensive new HD TVs.

That being the case, I really don't think that HD gaming is going to be a major selling point for this generation. I don't think that eventually the wii is going to stop selling simply because it's not an HD console, nor do I think that Nintendo needs to hurry up and release a new HD version of the wii. I don't think that for the 360 and PS3 HD is going to be the major selling point to push them into the top spot. The vast Majority of the US market doesn't even have a TV that could take advantage of a HD console, and even fewer would have any idea what component or HDMI cables, or even what 16:9 widescreen is.

 HD games make look great if you have the equipment and know how to use it, but for this generation at least I don't see that becoming more than a side point for consoles, rather than the actual selling point.

In the past I have said that HD was going to become a major factor to average consumers sometime between 2010 and 2015, after analogue brodcasts are ended, most television has gone HD, and people have switched to a HD disc format and really notice the switch between 1080p and 480p ... Right now even people who have HDTVs end up watching the bulk of their content at 480p or worse; this means that they get "used-to" the lower resolution rather quickly because they're accustomed to it.

Ah, but it's not important that the consumer is watching HD TV. All that matters is that he thinks he is. From a marketing perspective anyway. All those people who don't know but got the HD TV for HD are basically the same as the people who do watch HD TV.

Still HD adoption rates are pretty low for that to play a factor in the console biz.

It is pretty sad. In our area, to get "basic" HD all it takes it calling up the cable company and getting the HD cable box. Doesn't even cost extra money if you already have digital cable. There is a package for more channels and a cost for DVR capable cable boxes, but overall, people are very unaware. I finally got my brother to get HD and he's had a widescreen TV for over 6 years now (it's pretty old so I actually doubt it was HD though it might have been 720p). He bought a new HD LCD TV and while over told him just how much it costs to get HD (basically ranges from $0 to $15 extra a month if you want DVR, too).
We rarely stray from the HD channels at home. About the only shows are wrestling & South Park and apparently wrestling has been testing out HD cameras for their Friday night show.
My parents watch their HDTV in 4:3 all the time (so much so that they've got bad burns from the boxes)

Another thing to consider is that even for those of us who do know the ins and outs of HD, the majority of content is still in SD, and will probably remain that way for some time. Furthermore SD content looks far worse on an HD set than it does on a conventional TV, I'm pretty sure that it can be fixed but I haven't seen a set that does it yet, nor would I buy any of the current sets due to this issue, at least not at this point in time.

Kasz216: the thing is most of them don't eve think thay are watchin htv and ont know te erm.

They buy ths sets becuase they are slim and easy to move and syish...

Hmm, not too much argument on this point apparently. I've heard so much "Nintendo needs to release an HD wii or it's going to get trashed in the long run!" or "people will soon flock to the PS3 when they see the HD graphics compared to the crappy wii graphics". I figured there would be a little more contest on this. Guess not.

People are morons, no shiet.

 or they dont buy the fanboys "7 year old graphics are good enough" bs.

Finally a little contest!

The thing is the wii doesn't have 7 year old graphics, it's twice as strong as the previous generation, and the majority of consumers this generation can't or simply won't make use of HD graphics. HD graphics are superflous, and really quite unneccessary. A perk for a small fraction of gamers, but by no means a staple of the current generation.