Miyamoto’s thinking Wii in high def |
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| BY Aaron Yorke Oct. 16th, 2009 | More on: |
Back in 2006, Nintendo made the decision to hold off on high definition capability for the Wii in order to keep the price low and the focus on innovative motion control. However, in 2009 HDTV is much more prevalent than it was three years ago and you get the feeling it’s only a matter of time before Nintendo finally embraces the “new” technology.
Well it’s been a while but that feeling is finally shared by legendary Nintendo producer Shigeru Miyamoto. At a roundtable event in New York, Miyamoto spoke about the possibility of playing Wii in HD, “…I think as we’ve seen the penetration rates for HDTV increase, we’re going to see videogames and Nintendo’s games move along in step with the progression of technology.”
So just like it did with DVDs and online gaming, Nintendo appears to finally want to jump on the HD bandwagon. The question is how exactly? We still don’t know if Nintendo’s next sexy piece of hardware will be a big step forward or just “Wii Plus.” Either way, Miyamoto’s comments make us confident that whatever Nintendo’s next step is, it will include high definition technology.
October 16th, 2009
at 9:49 am
So what’ll happen is they’ll jump on the bandwagon way too late and do a terrible job of it, if history is any indication.
October 16th, 2009
at 12:36 pm
Hmm, I wonder which manufacturer is going to move into the “evolving ecosystem” direction first… What I mean by that is that, for example, Nintendo has been selling lots of people lots of add-ons to the Wii (wiimotes, nunchuks, balance boards, MotionPlus, classic controllers…), and after investing so much in a console it would likely be pushing things too far to ask people to replace it all in the next generation (not to mention not being very environmentally friendly).
So, imagine if the console *itself* could be part of this continuous evolution, where the next “Wii HD” console would be a “peripheral backwards compatible” replacement for the Wii console itself, but the controller(s) would not change at the same time. In other words, the controllers would be bought separately and evolve separately, with new controllers and peripherals perhaps being introduced 1-2 years after the introduction of the new console main unit. That way they could keep the price of the new console attractively low, making the upgrade less prohibitively expensive, and smoothen the migration between two generations. This would arguably be even more significant now given all the new “casual” gamers that are unlikely to be willing to swap all their HW over night.
In my mind, this would be the next logical step: Buy Wii, buy MotionPlus, buy Wii HD, buy MotionPlusPlus. Buy PS3, buy Sphere, buy PS4, buy SpherePlus. Buy Xbox 360, buy Natal, buy Xbox 720, buy NatalPlus. You get the point :)