Nintendo May Be Considering SD/HD Hybrid Console

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
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Nintendo May Be Considering SD/HD Hybrid Console



Nintendo's major visionaries are worried about the skyrocketing costs associated with creating High Definition games, and may be considering a next generation console that supports HD, but doesn't mandate it.

Imagine if you will that this generation of the console war was an episode of American Gladiators. On the one hand, you have the Xbox 360 and PS3 - hulking brutes bulging with well-oiled muscles and dripping with testosterone-laden sweat, standing high above the floor on two tiny platforms and trying to knock each other off with those padded sticks in order to gain dominance.

Meanwhile, the scrawny-looking Wii has eschewed "The Joust" entirely, and is currently kicking ass in "Assault," deftly diving from cover to cover while dodging a pelting rain of tennis balls. Only instead of dodging them, the Wii is letting itself get hit, because instead of tennis balls, it's actually being shot with mountains of money.

That's kind of the console war in a nutshell: The 360 and PS3 vying for high-definition technological dominance, while the Wii has gone off to do its own thing and has Nintendo has profited immensely. While gamers and developers alike may bemoan the system's technological inferiority and lack of HD support in an age when everything is higher and definitionier than ever before, Nintendo has had sound reasoning to make sure that the only 1080 you'll ever see on the Wii is followed by "Snowboarding": Making high-definition games is goddamn expensive, since the expenses of making a game have skyrocketed, and the profits have not.

In an Investor Relations Q&A, Nintendo's boss tech-head Genyo Takeda agreed that the progression to HD was "a natural flow," especially since it has become increasingly ubiquitous in television programming. However, merely forcing developers to spend more and more money - and consequently take fewer and fewer risks lest they fail and go out of business - doesn't sit right with the Nintendo bigwigs, so Takeda thinks it's likely that the successor to the Wii will still support games made in the current Standard Definition: "If we can find out the most appropriate medium, between SD and HD, and flexibly move around them depending on the game's contents, it will be good, I think."

Nintendo's Guru of Gaming Shigeru Miyamoto concurred, saying that it all depended on the style of game - what would Wii Sports have benefited for making the leap to HD? "For example, we have to ask ourselves if HD is really necessary to develop Wii Fit. Won't HD be better for the games like Pikmin? The developers should choose the most appropriate graphical format depending on the software they make."

It's hard to find fault with the argument that a hybrid wouldn't be convenient. If the Wii's next-generation younger brother has the potential muscle under the hood to support the newest and shiniest games for the developers with assured hits on their hands, but also lets the gamemakers go SD to take risks at lower expenses, it's kind of a "best of both worlds" situation, don't you think?

After all, though one could certainly make the argument that the Wii is just a breeding ground for a collection of crappy minigames and lackluster ports, does anybody think we'd see bizarre risk-taking games like Katamari Damacy that are far from guaranteed to turn a profit if they cost $50 million to make?

(Joystiq [http://nintendodpad.com/Welcome/News/Entries/2009/11/5_Nintendo%3A_HD_profits_are_becoming_harder_and_harder_to_make.html])

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Pendragon9

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Apr 26, 2009
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I guess they have a good point. Still, I would love to see some of their games in High Definition. Especially Pikmin, like they said. I love that game.
 

Eruanno

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Aug 14, 2008
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I would love it if Nintendo stopped making the same game over, and over, and over, and over... (Zelda, Super Mario, etc.)
 

Zamn

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CantFaketheFunk said:
After all, though one could certainly make the argument that the Wii is just a breeding ground for a collection of crappy minigames and lackluster ports, does anybody think we'd see bizarre risk-taking games like Katamari Damacy that are far from guaranteed to turn a profit if they cost $50 million to make?
Which is why LittleBigPlanet could never have been a PS3 game.
 

Booze Zombie

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You'd think, being the smart people they are, they could find some way of more efficently making graphically impressive games.

But no, Nintendo seems to like just doing the lazy option.
 

solidstatemind

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Nov 9, 2008
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This is probably not a bad idea-- for Nintendo. Let's face it: their corporate identity is somewhat built on a kiddie/casual game foundation... which SD is fine for. XBox360 and PS3, however, are substantially invested, identity-wise, in Halo/GoW and GTA respectively. They're not going to be able get by with anything but the slickest graphics, even in the B-list games.

Personally, I don't know if I care for it: if you make it so it's cheap to make games, you're going to get a lot of games, and most of them will be shitty. SD = more possibility for Shovelware, basically. But I understand that Nintendo is in business to make money, and they can probably make more money by sticking to their niche rather than pushing the evolution of graphics.

But, by god, I'm not going to buy another Nintendo console unless it is at least capable of HD. The difference in quality when I switch between Wii and PS3 just drives me batshit.
 

GonzoGamer

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CantFaketheFunk said:
After all, though one could certainly make the argument that the Wii is just a breeding ground for a collection of crappy minigames and lackluster ports, does anybody think we'd see bizarre risk-taking games like Katamari Damacy that are far from guaranteed to turn a profit if they cost $50 million to make?
Well... if you have enough monkeys throwing darts, one of them is going to hit a moneymaker to use the old stock market metaphor. The problem is that we aren't seeing too many risky games that were as cheap or as good as Katamari-D. Most of the really good games have been ports from the last gen. Even the critically acclaimed new games like No More Heroes, would've bombed on any other console.

If the wii had the processing power of the other two consoles, they could at least get ports of some of the really big games this gen. Fallout 3 could be really cool with motion controls. I'm not saying they can't have a blockbuster or a bunch of them for that matter, they just haven't. I don't see why they can't (with their truckloads of money) get big companies like Bethesda to make exclusive games for the Wii. The console needs a Fallout and/or a GTA; although with the latter they should get the guys who made Chinatown Wars; it was just way more fun than gta4.
 

Dorkmaster Flek

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Mar 13, 2008
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Goddamnit Nintendo, the textures and polygon counts don't have to be high-def! Mario Galaxy looked amazing and it's certainly good enough for most games. The problem was it looked like ass on my HDTV because it had no anti-aliasing and ran at 480p! Can you say "MEIN EYES! THE JAGGIES!"? :p All you need from HD to look decent is the resolution jump! If Galaxy ran at 720 or 1080 and looked otherwise exactly the same, it would make a world of difference.
 

munx13

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Dec 17, 2008
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Making HD games expensive? How is upping the resolution expensive?
 

Quadtrix

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Dorkmaster Flek said:
Goddamnit Nintendo, the textures and polygon counts don't have to be high-def! Mario Galaxy looked amazing and it's certainly good enough for most games. The problem was it looked like ass on my HDTV because it had no anti-aliasing and ran at 480p! Can you say "MEIN EYES! THE JAGGIES!"? :p All you need from HD to look decent is the resolution jump! If Galaxy ran at 720 or 1080 and looked otherwise exactly the same, it would make a world of difference.
You think it would be possible to release a firmware update that could remedy that? 480p is a very satisfying resolution if done right, but I don't want to have to buy an Enhanced-Definition TV, as opposed to a High-Definition TV, to get the best effect.
 

tk1989

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May 20, 2008
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Eruanno said:
I would love it if Nintendo stopped making the same game over, and over, and over, and over... (Zelda, Super Mario, etc.)
I would love it if Activision, EA, Bungie, Bethesda...*long list of nearly every game developer*.... stopped making the same game over and over too, but we don't live in a perfect world do we?

Nintendo aren't the only one who makes sequel after sequel.
 

munx13

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Dec 17, 2008
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Tenmar said:
munx13 said:
Making HD games expensive? How is upping the resolution expensive?
It actually is because there are multiple factors to ensure games in HD run smoothly and visually clean.

First is framerate. Remember Nintendo games slowing down? That's part of the factor.

Second is the graphics and the game engine. To have characters be "bigger" they require more polygons as well as the environment.

I'm no game programmer but yes, creating video games in HD do cost more when it comes to the production. There is no quick switch either.

Personally I'm fine with the wii staying with 480p and 720p with composite and component cables. Video game consoles have never been the representative of the latest technology until this console generation. Overall game consoles have been quite conservative with occasional tests.
We are only talking about resolution here, bigger characters do not necessarily require more polygons.
If I'm not mistaking, GT4 on PS2 ran at 720p, so Wii definitely has the capability.
Just try to put less stuff on screen at once, take some time to program a game and you can have HD games on the Wii.

2D games like Muramasa can easily run in 1080p even on the Wii
 

JediMB

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Oct 25, 2008
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munx13 said:
Making HD games expensive? How is upping the resolution expensive?
People are confusing turning up the resolution with actually making more detailed graphical content, obviously.

What Nintendo should be talking about is that developers shouldn't feel forced to make their games more graphically advanced than is necessary. Better to go for a nice stylized look that doesn't require as much work.
 

Caliostro

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Jan 23, 2008
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Ok, first things first, I totally agree with what they're trying to say that a console SHOULD support lower graphics and, in general, make programming for your console not a monumental headache (i.e: PS3). Independent developers and small studios can't afford 7 digit budgets for the graphic department alone.

THAT said, I'm reminded of that age old saying: Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

I admit I know next to nothing here, but I don't see a reason why you couldn't have a console that supports both lower and higher end graphics. This is another reason I love the PC. You can have low budget pearls with average graphics (thinking painkiller) and big budget titles with the kind of photo-realistic graphics that make the top notch graphic cards sweat and are held as benchmarks(crysis, fallout 3, etc, all on full max). Hell, digital distribution has been propelling the indies into the spotlight.

In the end, I think this is more of a developer mentality issue.
 

Tales of Golden Sun

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Dec 18, 2008
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Eruanno said:
I would love it if Nintendo stopped making the same game over, and over, and over, and over... (Zelda, Super Mario, etc.)
If you don't like it don't play it.

It's great that they do this. Caliostro is right.