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The Revolution Will Not Be HD
Gamecube Advanced has the news that the Revolution will not support HD signals. From the article: "Nintendo doesn't plan for the system to be HD compatible as with that comes a higher price for both the consumer and also the developer creating the game. Will it make the game better to play? With the technology being built into the Revolution, we believe the games will look brilliant and play brilliantly. This can all be done without HD." Sony and Microsoft are hanging the moon on the HD phenomenon, with both consoles supporting at least 720p or 1080i. Press the Buttons has commentary on the announcement.
IGN's article refers to emails sent by Nintendo, but since when does Nintendo directly report system capabilities to IGN?
I really can't believe the lack of planning that this move demonstrates. TFA correctly highlights the fact that not many consumers possess HD TVs at the moment. However, the 10% figure on its own should not be taken as evidence that HD TV isn't worth supporting.
First of all, consider that people who own HD TVs already are people who spend a lot of money on consumer electronics. These people are almost certainly going to be disproportionately likely to be early adopters of the next-gen consoles, even if they aren't hardcore gamers.
Next, think about the length of a console cycle. The current cycle has lasted... what... about four years (depending on when you time it from)? It's going to be getting on five or more by the time all three systems are on the shelves. In other words, you don't need to be thinking about the number of households that have HD TV now, you need to be planning for the number who will have HD TV in 2008 or so, by the mid-point of the next cycle. Remember what happened to the level of DVD-player adoption over a similar time-scale?
Oh, and I know I'll get modded down for saying this, but the "it's the games, stupid" rhetoric would sound a lot more convincing if Nintendo had any real track record of being able to deliver sufficient quantity of games over the last decade, or if they weren't making decision after decision that looks set to drive third-party cross-platform developers away.
While understand Nintendo's goal to keep the costs of thier system down, I just can't see anything good coming of this. Granted, HDTV isn't widley accepted by the masses in the USA, but it has been out for years in Japan, and is the standard. Furthermore, the FCC changed the timings of the US HD rollout (as previously covered on /.) making it far more agressive meaning that more than 10% of the american households will have HD in the relatively near future.
Finally, I have a DVD player that upconverts directly to HD, it currently runs about $150, and is expected to be $100 by end of year. This (along with the fact that Xbox has HD and is $149)makes me think that HD just isn't that expensive. It at least makes sense to add it in and not reequire the developers to use it. But put it there for them if they want to use it.
I agree with the commentary in the story, there will be quite a few people saying that this will be the demize of Nintendo. I, for one, agree.
When I was 13, at this point today would should have already HAD HD TV. 90% of America doesnt even own a HD READY TV let alone one that actually supports it. So why should Nintendo spend the money and make a system expensive when the truth is most things wont even see any sort of a benifit from it. Heck most " HD TVs" arnt really HD, they fudge with the signal.
the only people who are going to bitch about this are hardcore gamers, and as a recent article here shows, a lot of the developers would like not to pander to that segment anymore since its not the big money segment. They might buy the most expensive stuff, but they are so small to be insignificant in the big picture.
And most importantly, whats the point of HD when 99% of the games for ANY system computer or otherwise, are crap. If I wanted to see crap in HD I wouldnt flush the toliet before I got up.
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I have an HD tv. I am no longer interested in the revolution.
Don't forget that extra pixels come at the expense of image quality. If these systems have enough power to do all of the tricks that developers want you will be OK. If, however, higher-rez causes lower texture quality, reduced normal mapping, reduced environment lighting, or any of the other tricks, then it may not be worth it in terms of overall image quality.
Microsoft scored with the HD on the Xbox because a lot of Xbox games are ports of PS2 titles... hence developers can use the extra power to put out extra pixels, and call it a day. But if you're starting from scratch and trying to push 4x the pixels onto the screen for 10% of your users and giving up atmospheric effects for it, it seems somewhat unnecessary.
I'm not convinced the next generation of systems will be powerful enough to take "full" advantage of the pixels available to them currently, let alone 4x that many. And the majority of people who own HDtv's, don't realize that the normal signal is still at normal resolution. It's nice, but tough for the average person to see the difference. Nintendo going with a single image output standard is probably a good move overall, and I support their decision. Plus it will make my job easier, which is a nice bonus.
On the other hand, as a feature checklist, this will be a minus in most people's books. But most people who own HDTV's still play normal DVD's on them and somehow think they're running in High Density.
If you have an HDTV enabled game, you must optimize your game to look best in HDTV, and people with normal TV's just have wasted cycles that could be used for effects, etc. If you have a normal game, you optimize your game to look best on normal televisions, and while HDTV's potential goes underutilized, you still have the same great looking game as on normal TV's.
The ______ Agenda
You have a lot let time for each pixel. If you want to take full advantage of HD, all your art has to be a lot more detailed too.
:D
You would not believe the shit I can do in realtime at 320x240.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
If you're not convinced, you need to take a second look at how weak the graphics hardware is on current generation consoles. Look at what a budget video card today is capable of vs a top of the line card from 2001. The difference in performance is amazing.
Now compare a current midrange card to a budget card from ~2001. This is essentially the leap being made by the next generation consoles.
HD resolution is NOT a stretch for any kind of modern hardware -- low resolution for pc games these days is 1024x768, which is very near what HD games will be rendering at.
There's more to a game or a console than just the resolution and not all games are available on all systems. Especially Nintendo themselves won't release cross platform games so if there's a Nintendo game you want it's not "HD on X360 or SD on Rev", it's "Rev or nothing".
Besides, that comment came from Perrin Kaplan, she never has any clue about the hardware they're selling so it's still most likely that the Rev will do HD.
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