Nintendo's New Look

Forbes has an article talking with Nintendo of America's VP of Marketing Perrin Kaplan. She talks a little bit about Nintendo's upcoming plans, and the concept of the Blue Ocean. From the article: "For us, it's all about the experience, not if the technology allows you to play your game on the high-definition formats, which are now in such a small percentage of homes. Many independent sources tell us that experiencing current high-def games on a regular TV makes it near impossible to see everything clearly. That means the majority of homes are experiencing something lesser than what they bargained for. "

Re:Misinformation abounds

[Gr33nNight]

Here are a whole ton of unsold Xbox 360s. Boy those are sure flying off the shelf!

http://img304.imageshack.us/img304/1277/360nosello utscreen0016aa6os.jpg [imageshack.us]

Re:Misinformation abounds

[Just Some Guy]

Raise your hand if you've seen unsold 360's lying around unsold at your local retailer.

I admit that I don't have a "1337 Gam0rz B00t33k" in my town, but the local Wal-Mart has a stack of 360s available for sale. I personally don't care one way or another - I don't dislike MS any more than I dislike Sony - but your implication that the 360 is flying off shelves doesn't jibe with what I've personally seen.

Learn what words mean.

[autopr0n]

"impassionate" means almost the exact opposite of what you mean, in general. It means [reference.com] to make someone impassioned (it's a verb, not an abjective). Actually, there is one definition close to what you meant there, but it's pretty rare, I think. In fact, impassionate only appears in unabridged dictionaries. impassioned [reference.com] is a much more common word, and does mean the opposite of what you meant.

Re:Misinformation abounds

[ziggles]

A game optimized to look best at 480i will always look better at 480i than a game that was optimized for 720p and scaled down (assuming all other factors are equal).

Re:FUD

[clu76]

I fail to see the FUD in this. If anything, Nintendo is very much correct in their assertions about HD. Anyone that has a non-HD television pays for the HD feature of the 360, but don't experience HD gaming. And right now, that is an overwhelming majority of households. People keep saying that Nintendo is leaving a large portion of the market behind. But in reality, it is Sony and Microsoft that expect the market to catch up to them. By the end of this next gen console, you might have 50%+ HD penetration in homes.

Now I'm the exception to the rule. I have a 360 and a nice 62" HD TV. I'll share with you my take on HD gaming. The first few hours of gaming with my 360 I accidentally played at 480p (forgot to toggle the switch on the AV cable.) Before I realized this, I was still very impressed by next gen graphics. After switching over to HD, the picture did look sharper. But it was only a minor improvement. Especially compared to all the other advances in graphics. There is so much more we should be discussing about next gen graphics besides HD, but Microsoft and Sony have managed to frame the debate around this one narrow minded issue. If anyone is throwing out FUD, it's them.

That being said, I love my 360 (even though it ate my DOA 4 save file.) And I'm sure I'll love the Revo.

Re:FUD

[packeteer]

I have a unique perspective becuase i work in Redmond, WA testing the xbox 360 for a living. I have played just about every game on the market in HD and non-HD. Let me tell you that you are missing a LOT by not seeing it in HD. Many games such as Project Gotham Racing 3 is very difficult to play ona normal tv screen. The dark races are hard to see if the next turn is a left or a right. This system is made much worse when you must realize that not everyone has their optimal brightness/contrast/color ratios set. Many people turn up the brightness and contrast too high on their tv.

Games like DOA 4 as you mentioned are not as effected. You miss some of the finer tones on the skin btu the gameplay is alrgely uneffected. The game is brightly lit and there are not as many small details as in a dark racing game placed in a city.

Re:Misinformation abounds

[ziggles]

No, it doesn't turn out that way most of the time. If you're designing for 480i, then you can use a lot of tricks to give the illusion of detail. If you're designing for 720p, you're making things with "real" detail. When you view that on a lower resolution, most of the details will be lost/distorted.