Imagine if the Wii was in HD already. The other consoles would have failed. They already have more exclusives/1st party games, if it was in HD they would have WAY more 3rd party support like Modern Warfare, OrangeBox, Bioshock, Assassins Creed, Grand Theft Auto, Street Fighter IV, Prototype etc. and their 1st party games would look better.

You know I'm right. But it didn't happen :P. It just needed better online support, bigger harddrive space, and HD. You know they're going to put all that in the next console, it's going to own for sure. THEY MADE BANK OFF A CHEAP CONSOLE (gamecube with motion control)$$$$.

But then you think about it. Maybe it sold well because it was cheaper than the other consoles. The first holiday sales, most people wouldn't spend $600 or $400 on anyone.

*-* 1 more year...

If it was HD, it would probably cost more, which would have turned away the expanded market that has made them so successful. 3rd parties would have still rejected an HD Wii just as they rejected the Gamecube.

if there was a wii hd... then I'll be playing the wii hd to an hd t.v. since its name resembles it alot...

If Wii was HD it would have flopped, it would have been much more expensive and had possibly even less support and as a result fewer sales, this is why there will never be a Wi HD.

HD is just resolution. I can play a game from 1996 in HD and it will still look like shit.   Same graphic detail, just less blurry.

Price was their big advantage. It needed to be cheap to attract the sales they have. I will argue with some of their architecture designs though: 88MB of ram a Processor in the 700 MHz range even in 2006 those were sad numbers.

Nintendo decided against HD because at the time of release, HD was not widespread enough to justify the added cost.

The third party games did not come to a GC with similar technical specifications, so it is doubtful that a Wii with similar specs would have gotten the games. For example, Capcom made its decision on RE5 four years ago -- 18 months before the game was released and a year before what was then known as the Revolution was released.

Mike from Morgantown

This is all purely speculative, but a $400-500 HD Wii would have killed consumer adoption, and I wonder if it really would have attracted much more in the way of development. 3rd parties might have been attracted at the prospect of porting art assets over easier, but the idea of designing games for that controller would still scare the crap out of them, and the higher price of making original art assets would kill off 3rd party Wii exclusives.

Would an HD Wii have seen De Blob, Boom Blox, Little King's Story, Zack and Wiki, Monster Hunter 3, a host of horror games, and all those other titles that are too risky or niche to justify an HD budget? I don't think I would trade all those creative, low-budget games just to be able to play those blockbuster HD games with a Wii remote.

Here's what I think would have happened, were the Wii in HD:

1) Cost of development would inevitably be higher
2) Cost of hardware would inevitably be higher, hampering the userbase growth rate
3) Third parties would have looked at the Wii HD and motion control, and scoffed at the HD-level development costs plus the uncertainty of the new control scheme
4) Third parties would have written off the Wii HD before the generation started based on the GameCube's performance
5) Depending on whether the higher hardware cost was enough to shoot down the Wii HD, if/when the Wii HD's uptake catches third parties off guard, they'll continue to refuse development for the Wii HD, citing the tremendous uncertainty of a motion-based control scheme, and the need to ensure stable revenue by staying in familiar territory

Which is to say, in all likelihood, %*&$ all would have changed, even if the Wii HD sold just as well as the Wii (and that's a best case scenario).

Remember everybody. The other 2 consoles had tons of extra features and memory. The wii HD is just strounger. So I doubt its price will be higher than $350