I never said any of those things in terms of it being the ONLY format.

If I wanted to say it was the ONLY format, I would've said that.

I will say very clearly, Blu-Ray would be a great choice for Nintendo if they opt to go that route. Nothing wrong with the format at all, and it has several great things going for it that benefit both Nintendo and the consumer were it to be chosen.

In terms of cost/performance and vendor choice and price scalability over the long haul, I believe it will be difficult to beat.

I didn't claim you claimed it was the only format. I was calling on your claim a proprietary format would not be reasonable (not impossible, but unreasonable) solely because of the cost.

This is just wishful thinking from developers who want to develop games for all three systems.

When compared to Blu-Ray, I believe it would be tough for a propietary format producer to be able to beat every single one of the Blu-Ray vendors. 

Simple numbers game. Again that's my opinion. 

When Nintendo goes around shopping for their whatever format they want, I think they will find that it will be tough to beat how cheap some of the Blu-Ray vendors will go. And Nintendo can also leverage 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 of them against each other and create a bidding war more easily than with a format that maybe only 1 or 2 companies make period. 

And as Nintendo has already shown the last two generations, it's not that difficult to take an existing format and create a "propietary" version of it, to get the best of both worlds. 

"When compared to Blu-Ray, I believe it would be tough for a propietary format producer to be able to beat every single one of the Blu-Ray vendors."

That's still just discussing price, not other factors. And you're assuming Nintendo can't leverage vendors with even a proprietary format.

The other issue is these drives are already heavily mass produced today. The factories are built. They're good to go. They're more likely to bend on price issues on a drive like that than something that has to be designed from scratch or is a more rare type of order.

I'm sure Nintendo shopped around a while too before deciding the GameCube and Wii formats and found basically that a DVD-based format was the cheapest and best bang for the buck.

Beyond that, there's nothing wrong with Blu-Ray as a format choice at all. It would be a great choice, no-nonsense choice for Nintendo.

In about two years I think it'll actually probably be pretty difficult to get a DVD-only player ... they'll likely all be Blu-Ray players and if you're just looking for the DVD functionality, well it obviously does that too. Just like today it's virtually impossible to walk into a Best Buy or any major retailer and find them selling SD-only TVs, you're buying a flat screen HDTV set if you need a new TV, whether you want it or not. CD drives on computers are all DVD now, soon it'll be Blu-Ray too. 

You're still assuming that price and mass production are the main factors, and that other things are less likely to sprout up.

What if a solid state drive for home games becomes an option again (which has the advantage in loading times and durability)? And basing it on SD and DS cards would mean they ALSO have lots of possible vendors at a low cost.

It's just a possibility, but it's your insistance those other possibilities are less likely and important that I am calling you on.

And how would you have backwards compatibility with existing Wii games using a solid state format?

Including a disc drive just for backwards compatibility seems like a waste to me. 

I never said it was impossible to have a better format. Just unlikely. I believe it's quite possible that Nintendo will come to the same conclusion with Blu-Ray as they did with DVD -- it's the best format choice, even if they opt to make a few modifications. 

Things like a solid state drive I just don't see happening. Not unless they are going to ditch retail for digital downloads entirely, which I see as even less likely. 

But the Wii does have legacy slots for GC controllers and memory cards, and DVD drives are already inexpensive, so just including another one won't be a problem. And whatever the make, the game cart slot would just be right next to the SD card slot (although likely different to make them harder to pirate).

All I'm saying is that I would be happy if the graphics stayed at the PS2/GC era a few more years as long as the game moves more smoothly and is bigger then just 5 hour singleplayer.


I really don't care if I can see all the leafs on a tree or not just as long as the game is good.