^I'm saying that HD was not the minimum threshold for the 360. Developing in the same ballpark of PC gaming for about 5 years was, and the 360 was basically the cheapest they could come up with under these requirements.

And no, MS is pushing from Windows gaming to Xbox gaming, not in the other direction.

@WereKitten: But your point was, that if Nintendo had made Wii as HD console it had cost around as much as 360 to manufacture? Atleast this is how i read what you wrote.

No matter what ballpark M$ wanted its console, it doesn't relate to Nintendos interests.

It could be that they are pushing PC devs to (their) console. But what they still have in mind is to protect their OS business to be taken over by consoles. If M$ manages to pull its attempts through, we likely end up having a new MSX as consoles.

^I don't think that HD is a meaningful upgrade step, I think that HD and convenience in development is, and that's attainable at higher specs.

How much good exactly would HD have brought per se to the Wii? More money spent on each hardware piece, higher development costs. So again, the only _useful_ upgrade would have been bringing it in the same ballpark of 360 and PS3 when it comes to what developers require for CPU and GPU. It could have been cheaper than the PS3 (DVD instead of Bluray, Flash instead of HDD), but basically of the same order of cost of the launch 360.

@WereKitten: Better compatibility with HDTV:s and higher graphical detail. What good did upgrade to HD bring to PS360?

Now, there's really no reason for the console to equal 360 in specs. We could use the same logic to point out why 360 should have equaled PS3 in specs.

Even if Wii would have half of the processing power of 360, it would still be "in the same ballpark", but cheaper. Or third and it still would output HD without any problems.

Your development costs are not going to stay low if you try to do HD with a third of the processing power of the 360...

You're going to have to squeeze out every cycle you can out of the machine..

360 and PS3 are balanced upgrades over the previous models, where the whole package (GPU, CPU power, memory, multithreading, storage) allows a whole new scale of technical achievements. Reaching HD resolutions is nice, but it's not the main result, however people may like the  "HD" checkbox ticked. And as I said it's also not always worth the increase in costs unless the whole upgrade allows you to improve your development processes in some measure.

A Wii with a third of the CPU power of the 360 but in HD would output SMG at 1080p, but would not be able to cope with the scale of Oblivion or Fallout 3, or the crowds of Dead Rising or Heavy Rain, or the mass action scenes of Gears 2 or Heavenly Sword. Nothing of what people feel is really a new technical achievement of the current generation of consoles over last.

The upgraded GPU and CPU would have cost Nintendo somthing in the order of extra $80-$150 per console at launch. To date that would mean what, a $2-3B  less profits if we factor in hardware depreciation? And major increse in assets costs for developers. And still someone wanting to play Oblivion or Fallout or GTAIV would have to go to PC, PS3, or 360.

Really, HD itself is not a magic bullet. It's about convenience for the developers.