What is Digg?141 Comments
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -10/+88Good grief what an idiot. High Definition support does NOT equal blu ray or HD-DVD.
- estvir, on 10/12/2007, -4/+63Someone should tell them the Xbox360 has HD support for *all* games and they didn't bloat the price by including a HD-DVD Player, which was quite a smart strategy.
Yes, I know this article was about PS3/Blu-Ray, but HD isn't a mistake, just the way Sony went about it seems silly, while MS approached it in a decent way.
Actually, I agree with neiltc13, this guy is an idiot. - bpapa, on 10/12/2007, -6/+39Honestly I got sick of clicking after three pages, ***** About.com and their page view counts.
Here's my take though - Nintendo has said that they thought that putting in HD support for Wii would be something that was too early - not a large percentage of people have HD sets, and they really won't until end of the Wii lifecycle. Nintendo likes to be profitable, and making an HD-supported console would be expensive. To them, the opportunity cost was just too high, and quite frankly looking at all the positive buzz the Wii has going, and the negatiive buzz the PS3 has going, I think most smart people would agree with their decision. - silverSurfer84, on 10/12/2007, -2/+29gameboyhippo I dont think you realize what estvir said was correct.
- Romanito, on 10/12/2007, -7/+30@joeshlub
The 360's price seems reasonable only since we know that the PS3 will be $600. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+22"And everyone who owns an HDTV disagrees with their decision."
I don't... and I have a 51" HDTV sitting in the next room. I completely understand how it fits into their "blue ocean" strategy. They're not going for the high-end early adopter crowd with the Wii. Cost is more important in their plan. If they can put out a (historically) $200 console with an innovative controller, free online gameplay, virtual console for backward compatibility, upgraded graphics (the SSB video shows a good comparison), etc... and still manage to not take a (significant) loss on hardware... that's a win. The vast majority of their target market does not have an HDTV and probably will not have one through the console's life. So, the cost of the boost in GPU power and memory necessary to accomodate HDTV resolutions and the textures necessary to really notice the difference would just be eating into their profits. They're still in the game because of how profitable they manage to stay. They don't have the luxury of massive pockets like Sony and Microsoft from which to draw cash to support their video gaming division (practically the entire company, in Nintendo's case). - Farodek, on 10/12/2007, -7/+27@joeshlub
i work in an area that consists of about 200 programmers and around 1000 computer operators, most of which are complete geeks and hardcore gamers, yet i don't know any of them who are dying to get a 360 or ps3, but i know a lot of them can't wait to get a wii. basically, i hate it how people keep saying 'real harcore gamers' when refering to the 360 and ps3 market; when was the last time you spent 4 days straight in front of a game? heck, most of us have taken weeks off at a time just to get a net toon on eq2 or cov up to lvl.
it's not that nintendo is trying to appeal only to the non-hardcore gamer, but that the 360 and ps3 keep selling themselves as a hardcore gamer's machine, therefore appealing to the 'i want to play games and still be cool' market who aren't willing to go away from their 'cool' friends and play stuff that is just genuinely fun yet not necessarily top end graphics and firepower. (most of us, in my office, still regularly play 'Pokemon' and 'Super Mario NES')
real 'hardcore gamers' don't even use the term hardcore gamer because they play games to play games, not fit in with the crowd. - noliberalbull, on 10/12/2007, -11/+29NeoTechni: All 300 hundred of them
- prockcore, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19If you didn't know it didn't support HD until now, odds are good that you were never going to buy the wii anyway.
- oncomouse, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16The Wii is trying to be a mass market machine. The mass market doesn't have HDTVs yet. So what the hell is the point in including HD here? Sony is positioning themselves to end up as a niche product for the small percentage of people who have HDTVs already. I guess that makes sense though, because anyone who is willing to shell out $600 for a PS3 is most likely the same kind of person who already dropped a couple grand on a TV.
- sakuraz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Funniest thing is, the success/disaster didn't even start to happen yet.
This is speculative journalism at its worst - Bioshocker, on 10/12/2007, -4/+16"That article was absolutely worthless."
Hardly surprised. I can't say I associate about.com with high-quality, hard-hitting journalistic expertise. - skywake, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1392% of people are sick of that comment....
- thebranca18, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12"If you want to be literal 480p is also HD."
No, no it's not. 480p is ED. 720p and 1080i are HD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/480p
I know a lot of you are loving the Wii, but there's no reason to spread false things like: "all the next-gen consoles will be HD-enabled". It's simply not true. - xgravix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11720p is generally considered to look better than 1080i. If the PS3 can really do 1080p that will be impressive, but televisions that can display true 1080p (and I mean actually display every pixel, not just downsample the input) are still rare and quite expensive.
- crash331, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12GT4 is upscaled...it isn't actually 1080i.
- bpapa, on 10/12/2007, -10/+18And that is a very small part of people who will purchase a video game system.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11That's not something I just pulled out of my ass. That's Nintendo's *target* market. If someone made it up... it was Nintendo. Still, that doesn't mean the console is going to *sell* well in those demographics... just that Nintendo is trying to *market* it to everyone. So, if you have a problem with their "blue ocean" strategy, don't shoot the messenger... go here:
http://www.nintendo.com/contact - frank3000, on 10/12/2007, -9/+16i am prob. the biggest wii fanboy there is, but i'm still dissapointed that i won't be able to play it in hd on my hdtv
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10ya that sucks... there's a LOT of HD tvs out there now.. it makes a big difference in the experience... but nintendo will have fun games like usual.. so w/e
- opnickc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I have access to an HDTV. By that I mean when I'm not away at school I live with my parents who have an HDTV.
Do I care about having HD? Well, it'd be nice, but it's not worth buying/not buying a system over - not yet. I may be incorrect on these statistics, so go ahead and call me out if I'm way off, but I remember hearing the following:
Only 10% of american households have HDTVs
Of the 10%, half don't have any sort of HD media hooked up to the TV
Out of the half of that 10% that do get HD service, half of them (25% of HDTV owners) don't even have the thing hooked up right, and are actually watching in SD
If only 10% of your potential market owns HDTVs, and half of them don't bother to get HD content, and of those who do half don't even have it hooked up right, why do you think their going to care about the fact that your system is HD?
As I said, it's a nice thing to have (if I were to get a 360, the first thing I'd do is hook it up to the HD set), but it really shouldn't be implemented until there is either more demand for HD or the cost of having HD in the console is insignificant. - Misanthrope, on 10/12/2007, -5/+12@Farodek
Wow, someone who actually *gets* it. Sice when did being a "hardcore" gamer mean playing an FPS online all day? In my mind Super Mario World is hardcore, and Dragon Quest is hardcore.
Hard core doesn't mean "Hard Ass". Being a cool gamer and a "real" gamer are totally different things. - ejectMedia, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Agreed here as well, BUT HD support means beefier hardware which means higher price point. I have an HDTV, but the Wii still interests me anyway.
- SuperMank, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11I for one am glad that I'm not paying extra for pixels which I won't even see.
- mshea, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Here's a note I sent to the author:
I think you missed a couple of points in your article:
1. Xbox 360 includes HDTV support, it looks beautiful, and the system is very popular. The cost is higher than the Nintendo Wii but its a lot lower than the PS2. HDTV support doesn't require a $700 price tag.
2. HDTV support in game systems is a clear way to make a leap in graphical improvement. How long should we wallow in 480i graphics while PCs run games at 1920 x 1200?
3. What percentage of your HDTV statistics include those who have computer monitors capable of displaying 1280 x 1024? I know I have four of these in my house alone and I can by more for a lot less than $1000. The Xbox 360 has an optional VGA output to these computer monitors and it will look a lot better than a TV.
4. Only by releasing HDTV sources will people bother to buy HDTVs. The Xbox 360 is the first system I owned that displayed HDTV-level graphics. These new high-def game systems are a big reason for people to upgrade. $1000 sounds like a lot but the TVs are significantly bigger than $300 32" TVs. Of course, you only get what you can display.
I don't work for the television industry or the gaming industry but I love how Burnout Revenge looks on my HDTV. I think its a damn shame that the Nintendo Wii won't bother to put in 1280 x 720 resolution games. It would require very little change to their hardware - again, you don't need a blue-ray DVD player to do HDTV level graphics, just better video hardware.
Thanks for your time,
Mike - ejectMedia, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Much agreed here. I for one actually have an HDTV and I'm not a huge gamer at all. BUT the Wii seriously interests me because of the innovative control system and how fun the games form Nintendo usually are. WHo knows, I may end up getting one anyway. But still I'd love HD support - then again HD support means beefier hardware which in turns means a higher price, and thats another reason I like the Wii, it's cheap.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+12ahuh thats why the 360 isn't selling like hot cakes
oh wait, it is. - SPARTACVS, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Seeing Oblivion running in 720p, I have difficulty categorizing HD support as a "mistake" by Microsoft. Marked as lame...
- opnickc, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8It'll do 480p. I know that's not HD, but I played a 360 running at 480p on a nice HDTV, and, though not as good as 720p or 1080i, it looked great.
I'm just not sure if Wii games will be required to be 480p, or if it's up to the developer. - omninode, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6The thing nobody seems to realize here is that putting HD support in a machine can actually be bad for people who have standard-def TVs. In many Xbox360 games (like GRAW), for example, it is very difficult to read the in-game text because it is formatted for HDTVs. This means that the majority of gamers will have a much worse gaming experience because the games are simply not made to work on their TV.
Hopefully HDTV will be the majority before the next generation of consoles, but right now it's out of most consumers' reach. - mgillow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I've owned a Samsung 50 in. DLP HDTV for the last two and a half years now, purchased before HDMI and 1080p. $4,000 was a steep price, but I had the money and wanted to take the plunge, and after a great deal of research, decided that the DLP would probably be the best bet for a large television with HD support. I don't regret that decision, but as an owner and user, I have to agree with the parent and say that HD in the living room has some maturing left to do.
When you can get HD content and have it set up correctly to view said content, it's absolutely astounding. We have a few HD channels with our cable service and DVI out on our cable box, making the resulting pictures in 720p (I don't use the TV's 1080i because progressive-scan content looks much better -- something a lot of HDTV owners don't realize) look jaw-droppingly gorgeous. However, standard definition (480i) content looks absolutely atrocious compared to what's seen SD CRT televisions (this is due to scaling and upsampling issues -- something every HDTV has trouble with).
Could this be fixed? Yes, actually, it can, but not without expensive hardware or driving the cost of HDTV monitors up. Therein, as they say, is the rub.
To get those HDTVs so bloody cheap, they leave out a lot of very expensive hardware to process video signals (reduction of noise, jagged edges, fuzzy pictures, scaling and re-drawing standard definition content). It's hard to justify getting the hardware out there and widely-adopted at a (progressively) low(er) cost when the components needed to reprocess and purdify 95% of the accessible viewer content are absent. These components are absolutely vital to remedy the issues with standard definition content.
In order (right now) to get around the lacking processing capabilities in all HDTVs, you'll have to add an optical processor (like the Silicon Optix Whitehorse video signal processor (which runs about $3,500 US)) or buy a new television when they actually start making HDTV monitors with these kinds of processors (alternately, cable box manufacturers could include these processors for their SD content, but they have yet to do so). And to justify such an upgrade, you're still going to have to wait until there's more HD content to view, which is going to take a while considering that cable and satellite network providers don't have the bandwidth to support more than ten to twelve HD channels on top of the numerous SD channels they beam in.
HDTV is still in its infancy and still quite complex with all its shortcomings, its wide variety of signal inputs/outputs, and its varying degrees of quality craftsmanship on the hardware side. In order for it to be more widely adopted, it's not so much the price that needs to come down as it is the complexity. HDTV needs to be further simplified and given a wider bredth of available content. The HD-DVD/BlueRay war is counterproductive to that end, I feel, serving only to further complicate matters and confuse the average consumer. - racketboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5dcmiltown, The Dreamcast is able to output true 640x480 VGA (480p60 EDTV). The picture was extra clear and sharp when combined with the VGA adapter:
http://www.racketboy.com/store/dreamcast-vga-cable-box.htm - MonkeyFit, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Other than the title of the article, I don't recall seeing the word "Nintendo" anywhere in there. He just talked about the PS3 and briefly mentioned the 360.
- rova, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Here's a test - buy a DS Lite and a PSP. Get a copy of New Super Mario Bros and Brain Training and whatever you think people will like on the PSP. Take it around your iPod toting family. The graphics of the PS will more detailed, but I bet you that 3/4 of them want a DS. Because its small, sexy, and fun. If you want a hi-def 2001 game play it on you Media Center.
- jmdajr, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I like my HD gaming.
- Unicron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4You mean like the PS2's online support? And we know that didn't sell at all...
- Unicron, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@jeet:
I had my doubts too but a quick google turned up this ars technica article ( http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20030619-165.html ) with the following quote:
"In 1996 a typical PlayStation game cost less than $1 million to make and sold for $49. Today, development costs for an Xbox or PlayStation 2 game run anywhere from $5 million to $7 million per title and sell for $49.99. And some game titles can cost upwards of $30 million."
No names there but I can imagine HL2 or Doom 3 costing huge amounts of cash.
Edit: Whoops actually comes from this MSNBC article ( http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3078404/ )
PS: For the love of god, someone get HTML in comments - staticneuron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4video games have never had a price point customers have been "used" to. They have a range and normally it is based on the power of the hardware. The systems that have failed before at a high pricepoint did not have two, not even one really, succesful consoles releases before they hit the market. A plethora of titles and company support that you will hope to get in thier next iteration.
Blu Ray works. I am not sure how you want the technology to be "proven" but it works. As far as what goes on the 25 gig disk is not really reflective of the technology.
So the creators of enchant arms for 360 have been vocal about fitting thier content on a DVD9 disk and Hideo kojima has said that it is not even possible for MGS4 to fit on a DVD9 disk. These are the people that have been vocal about it. Chances are there are more. In another article a digg user called game devs lazy if they could not fit games on a 9 gig. Why should they spend thier time and resources and even end up cutting things out just because disk space is an issue.
Let it be a choice. For the consumers and the game devs. Hd content, bigger media and price point. It is good there is a device catering to every possible extreme you can imagine. let us see how this pans out in the next year and a half. - staticneuron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The also used very business safe tactics for the N64 and the Gamecube. Why don't you try comparing thier console to thier consoles and leave thier winning streak for thier handhelds on thier own.
- postal21, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4wii should support something high-definition because television sets might not need to be 1080p... but they do need to be higher resolution for games these days.
Lots of 360 games suffer because the games need to be programmed for standard television pictures along with HDTV. I know lots of people dont have HDTV (myself included)... but I will be purchasing one in the next year or so, not just for my ps3, but to finally switch over to the new standard.
Lets be honest guys, standard televisions went out with the nintendo64 as "good" pictures... I just wish the wii had output support for it... how hard is that? :( - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5It's probably not that there is some hardware lock-out of anything higher than 480p (Nintendo has at least confirmed progressive scan) but, instead, that they don't want to promise anything extremely unrealistic and have people disappointed about the visual quality. If it *does* have a hardware limit of 480p that would be a step back to PS2 technology. The GC at least gave developers the *option* (even though it was rarely utilized) and the Wii is supposed to be based around similar (but beefed-up) hardware. So, I don't see why not...
Nintendo seems to have been taking the strategy of starting with nothing and constantly working their way up, while being realistic about what their machine can do, and not building an unattainable image. It seems to be working well. The worst thing you tend to hear about the Wii is, well, too much positive stuff about it. Who would have thought that waiting until you have something to say/show... and then not ***** your customer about it would be a good tactic? Sony, I'm looking at you. - bobbles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The article talks about the lack of HDTV's among gamers... what about computer monitors?
The xbox360 display at my work is set up on a 19" widescreen monitor and it looks fantastic (we're in a rural area so got fudged around getting a real display unit, we made our own) - vhold, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Well, we are talking about Nintendo. They've been very successful releasing their portable hardware twice and getting people to buy both, maybe they are taking that mentality to the Wii. GBA -> GBA SP, DS -> DS Lite.
GBA was arguably purposefully gimped by having no backlight.
DS was arguably purposefully gimped by being inordinately large.
Wii is potentially purposefully gimped by lack of HD?
The practical upshot of this though is the prediction that Wii-HD will be released 2008-2009, and won't be a new platform, it will just make existing game's sharper, and maybe fix some other not yet known flaw. (ex: chargers built into the unit for the wiimote, etc) - rideagain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@opnickc:
"Do you expect me to believe that in two years - just when a new console is beggining to hit its prime - Nintendo is going to launch another console (...) ?"
I could totally see them release an upgraded Wii that would be backward compatible with the old one. That would not piss off customers or developers, and it would be in line with what Nintendo did with its handhelds. - Thmstec, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5My probs with this article..
1. The title is misleading. He doesn't even talk about Nintendo, its Sony, Sony, Sony, Sony, M$, Sony, Sony.
2. He only considers HD-DVD/Blu-ray HDTV content. We all know that's simply not the case. Xbox Live is the largest distribution method for non-live HD content direct to consumers at this time, I'm sure Sony's online component will distribute HD content as well. And then, THERE ARE THE GAMES!!!! THE THINGS THAT SELL CONSOLES!!!!
3. The HDTV penetration numbers are so far off it is sad. The average selling price of HDTVs last month was around 1500$ (I forgot the source, but it is accurate). The research group that was guessing 82% by the end of the decade was predicting the avg price to drop to 1000$. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it'll be - MonkeyFit, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6@joeshlub
Can you point me in the direction of one of these 1080p 19" monitors for $200? - godfa7h3r, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@MonkeyFit
"Can you point me in the direction of one of these 1080p 19" monitors for $200?"
Any computer monitor that can display a resolution of 1920X1080 will do. - badfrog, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4480P = 704x480, 852x480 (16:9) or 640x480 (4:3)
When is the last time you played a PC game at those resolutions? And typical PC screens are much smaller than the same person's typical television.
Wii games will look like garbage compared to the competitors on HD compatible sets. - rova, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Nintendo also tossed up what value would be brought by HD. The graphics of the Wii will be noticeably better than the xbox and ps2 which at their best have very impressive graphics themselves. I honestly do not find my 360 any more enjoyable than my xbox - and thats because it is really just the same old games with more of something I didn't ask for. I cannot wait for the Wii so that we actually see some new gameplay outside the standard 'shooter, driving, sports' which we have seen redone 1000 times.
- skywake, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4thats a posibility, and would make sence....
but then again, Wii != Handheld
that being said. Nintendo has been known to be almost random and unexpected. -
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