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.

Comments

Not a shock only hardcores will even care.

[falcon5768]

Seriously Why should I pay a extra 50+ dollars on a feature maybe 2-3% of the people buying the thing will even use. Sure you will read here people kicking and screaming about this, but the truth is we are still a LONG way away from HD being accepted and if the past has anything to show it might even be longer.

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.

Re:Wow. They're shooting themselves in the foot.

[cgenman]

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.