So umm..doesn't the transition to high definition shoot the Wii in the foot?

R

Rangers

Legend
I was just thinking about this, I'm guessing maybe 25% of people currently have HDTV's, but the transition is in full heavy swing and should accelerate each Christmas season. The majority of people having HDTV's is two years away or less I'd assume.

Anyway, when my brother plays PS2 on his LCD, it looks absolutely HORRIBLE. It wouldn't be so bad if it was CRT of course, although that's bad enough, but playing SDTV on a LCD just adds another entire layer of awful to the picture. Maybe with super expensive sets it's not so bad? But I bet it's still bad.

So the more people go to HDTV, the more the Wii gets to be a non-starter? I think that could be a big problem...
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480p and widescreen helps, to a degree.
There will be enough people who doesn't care about HD yet. I don't see Wii becoming market leader though, because of it's design choices.
 
I can't stand scaling artifacts in games which is why I'm sticking to CRTs for as long as I can. I have a 30'' Sony KV-30HS420 Trinitron CRT HDTV. Only negative is like other CRT HDTVs it isn't outputting a full HD picture. The actual resolution it resolves on screen is 853x1080i.
 
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I think over 75% of the people who buy a hdtv dont care about all the hdtv resolution stuff. They just want a stylish flat tv, thats all. Everything on dutch tv is still in PAL, still you dont hear anybody complain about how bad it looks on hdtv.
 
tongue_of_colicab said:
I think over 75% of the people who buy a hdtv dont care about all the hdtv resolution stuff. They just want a stylish flat tv, thats all. Everything on dutch tv is still in PAL, still you dont hear anybody complain about how bad it looks on hdtv.
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I just watched some on our company HDtv, and god it looks bad! :D

But we can get HDtv more and more though through our Digital Cable boxes.
 
I doubt that more than 10-15% Europeans have HDTV's. No killer criteria there for a few years to come, I think.
 
I chose HDTV for the bigger and better picture quality. I'm very happy with DVD's at 480p, and even though HD shows some improvement it's not a make or break deal for me.
And I think 25% it too generous to HD penetration,the highest figures I've seen are 15% and that's in countries like the US where penetration is high. I've even read reports lately that DVD(not HD) penetration still has alot of room for growth even in the US. So I don't think HD will make a big deal this gen for most people.
This brings up another thing I noticed this weekend.
I have now played GOW on my HDTV in HD, and also now on a 30" CRT tube TV at 480i.I noticed that alot of the effects that set these next gen games apart get lost in translation or washed out while playing on a standard TV. Certain things like the level of detail come though ok,but I found these next gen shader effects don't really tanslate well at all. Quality will vary but I feel the SD TV I was playing it on was repsentative of the TV I see in the vast magority of my friends and families homes.
My guess is when Nintendo looked forward at what most gamers would be playing thier system on,they had to make decision about what would give them the most visual impact and bang for buck on the average TV. And fancy shader effects just didn't cut it.
 
Arwin said:
I just watched some on our company HDtv, and god it looks bad! :D

But we can get HDtv more and more though through our Digital Cable boxes.
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Yeah and national geographic and animal planet already have some HD content but since we are Dutch we both know almost nobody will pay for ddb boxes. Afterall we dont want it unless its free :D
 
I think comparing it to DVD and PAL broadcasts doesn't capture the whole picture. Those are basically infinitely anti-aliased sources, not 3D renderings. I don't have a Wii yet to check (EU launch is in December), but if my PS2 is anything to go by, the games will be a jaggy mess on a 1080p LCD. I've read reports that say as much elsewhere. But if I can live with it for FF12, then I can also live with it for Zelda TP. It's also possible to reduce the horrificness with some clever art decisions. For example, Okami doesn't look that bad at all on my 1080p display.
 
I think a lot of the Wii playing will be on the second or third tv in the house that is unlikely to be HD. There are many nights I have to move my 360 to the second tv because someone is watching something on the HD-Tivo.
 
ninzel said:
This brings up another thing I noticed this weekend.
I have now played GOW on my HDTV in HD, and also now on a 30" CRT tube TV at 480i.I noticed that alot of the effects that set these next gen games apart get lost in translation or washed out while playing on a standard TV. Certain things like the level of detail come though ok,but I found these next gen shader effects don't really tanslate well at all. Quality will vary but I feel the SD TV I was playing it on was repsentative of the TV I see in the vast magority of my friends and families homes.
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Yeah that's something I've noticed as well from taking my 360 over to a friends house regularly. Its amazing how poor a lot of 360 games look on a standard TV. So many jaggies and most of the detail and effects are just missing. Even running the 360 in 480p on my HDTV looks worlds ahead of the 360 on a standard TV (480p to 720p isn't anywhere near as big a difference on my TV). So I really don't see why Wii should look poor on a decent HDTV with component cables. Maybe if your using a 52" then 720p might really start to make a big difference, but how long is it going to be until any decent amount of the worlds population have that size and above HDTV's?
 
I don't see the lifespan of the Wii lasting more than 3 years.

Nintendo has essentially already said 'Uhh.. Well.. Maybe whoops?' and that their next console will focus on graphics and power.

Now why would they say that if they didn't realize they'd made a mistake?

As I mentioned in another thread, if you live in NA (which I assume the OP does), you are getting inundated with ads from "warehouse" stores like Costco, Target, and Walmart telling you to buy an HDTV.

As somebody said, most don't care about "HD content" they just want the thin tv. But when they get that tv home and hook it up to the Wii, the result will be the same.

"This looks like crap!" and that will immediately remove the Wii from the living room, and remove the Wii from being the primary entertainment device.
 
Do HDTV manufacturers deliberately make SD content look a thousand times worse than it does on a CRT to accentuate the dire necessity of HD or something? My dorm has one of those old-fashioned "big screen" rear-projection TVs, and S-Video content looks pretty darn nice on it. I love playing my Gamecube on it. But my friend has a smaller LCD HDTV, and everything looks a whole lot worse. And for some reason, composite has far more scaling artifacts than S-video.

BTW, RE4 looks like a jaggy mess on a regular SD CRT as well. For some reason, no one complained about this in reviews...maybe they'd been playing too much PS2?
 
RancidLunchmeat

I don't think Nintendo feel they've made a mistake. What has changed now from last year or even the year before that would have changed there minds?, nothing that I can see. Its more likely that they believe HDTV ownership will be high enough to warrant focusing on power when there next console comes around. Also by then developers will be totally used to creating games with the new controller and so can spend more time concentrating on graphics again rather then finding ways to use a new controller. That of course is what I think there reasoning is, not mine (from reading interviews ect). If it was up to me Wii would have been as powerful as 360 and I'd leave the problem of making new fun games with the new controller and great graphics down to developers, I'm sure they could handle it :)

By the way, could you link me to any interviews where Nintendo have said directly that there next console will focus on graphics and processing power? Not saying I don't belieive you, I just haven't seen any direct quotes for this from Nintendo.
 
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I'm crossing my fingers with the idea that Nintendo might be working towards releaseing a Wii-HD; a console with all the functionality of the Wii but which renders all those Wii, GCN and previous games in high resolution. I wished for MS to do that with the orignal Xbox and Sony to do it with the PS2, but both have simply moved on to new HD platforms with shady "backwards compatablity". Maybe Nintendo will be smart enough to do it right.
 
I would settle for 16:9, 480p from the Wii. Unfortunately, Nintendo did not make that mandatory for some reason. Out of the games I've tried on the HDTV, I know that Rayman has no 480p or widescreen support :(
 
I'm curious how you got your 25% number. I know very few people who own HDTV's, and I work in high tech.

Pretty much everybody I know has no interest in even considering an HDTV purchase before there's a solid standard of resolution and technology in place at a price point that could at least be considered reasonable relative to an SDTV.

It's going to be a *long* time before HDTV penetration hits 25%, let alone 50%. The price point is an automatic non-starter for anyone outside of the highest earners.
 
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