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Nintendo Businesses Media Television Entertainment Games

The Revolution Will Not Be HD 266

Posted by Zonk from the high-def-crap-is-still-crap dept.
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.
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The Revolution Will Not Be HD More

The Revolution Will Not Be HD

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  • No HD. Boo-hoo (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Saturday June 11, 2005 @01:42PM (#12789952) Homepage
    Big deal. Most people have a SD TV right now. That will continue for a while. Sony and Microsoft are interesting and all in that they want to give us all 1080i signals, but I'm not going to go out and buy a $2000 TV just to play videogames (especially when I just bought a $300 console).

    I think Nintendo's decision makes sense. For most people, this makes no difference. And my bet is that their console will do progressive scan (say 480p). Maybe they'll even offer 720i. They just aren't going after 1080i. I see no problem with this.

    Things will still look good, they just won't be as jaw-dropping on that 50" TV. And considering how many people have 50" HDTVs, they are really "shooting themselves in the foot". It's cute that the PS3 can drive two 1080p TVs at once, but how many people are really going to USE that setup?

    I don't see this as any real problem. I don't think it will really effect most people. And if you are so gung-ho that all your games must be 1080i or better, buy the versions for the PS3 or XBox 360.

    • Re:No HD. Boo-hoo (Score:2, Interesting)

      by MooseMuffin ( 799896 )
      I have an HD tv. I am no longer interested in the revolution.
      • How could you possibly tell the difference anyhow? If you're like 99% of the people in the US, you're just watching DVD's or (if you're really lucky) badly artifacted, low bandwidth signals from a satellite or cable provider.

        Personally, I just think this is a really bad marketing move on Nintendo's part -- they should stick "HD compatible" on the checklist on the side of the box, and then not actually provide any increased resolution. That way, everyone with an HD TV who has never actually seen an HD sig

      • Re:No HD. Boo-hoo (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Zerth ( 26112 )
        So I'm guessing you have also thrown away your tapes, most of your dvds and all your other consoles, as none of them support HD tvs either?
    • With the state of the world's patent system I wouldn't doubt removing HD saved them some serious cash per console. Besides saving money on IP, support, and hardware they will also have better looking games on standard TVs since developers don't have to mess around with HDTV resolutions.

      The highest resolution you are going to get with SD NTSC is 720x480(basically 480i). There are 6 times as many pixels on a 1080i/p display than a 480i/p display. The higher resolutions don't only tax the GPU more, they als
      • I'm guessing almost all XBox360 and PS3 games will only support 480p because of speed issues.
        You couldn't be more wrong about that. Hell, 95% of all Xbox1 games even support 480p. Some of the really nice looking games even support 720p (like Amped 2).

        You are correct that HD does have a performance hit, but these next-gen consoles are designed to be able to handle that. For example, the Xbox360 has a very tricky method to help deal with the increased bandwidth costs in that it has an integrated 10 megs of
        • MS isn't kidding when they say all Xbox360 games must support a minimum of 720p (which is incidentally more performance-needing than 1080i in most cases) - the console is designed for that.

          What? 1080i has over twice as many pixels as 720p. Interlacing is just a matter of pushing the pixels in a different order and 1080i needs AA just as badly as 720p does. What are you talking about?

          Most games support 480p because it's relatively simple. Standard Def TV is analog 480i and the only difference between 4

          • Re:No HD. Boo-hoo (Score:3, Informative)

            by LocalH ( 28506 )
            720p and 1080i are a lot closer in terms of pixel count per second than you might think. Let's lay out some facts, then use those facts to do the math:

            720p = 1280x720x60fps
            1080i = 1920x1080x30fps

            720p = 921600 pixels per frame
            1080i = 2073600 pixels per frame

            720p = 55296000 pixels per second
            1080i = 62208000 pixels per second

            Sure, within a single frame, 1080i has shitloads more pixels, at half the frame rate it almost evens out, but not quite.

            Also, with 720p, you have more vertical resolution with 60fp

    • Your argument is flawed... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Iscariot_ ( 166362 ) on Saturday June 11, 2005 @08:29PM (#12792037)
      Your argument has a big flaw. Why go after the market of people w/ the 50" TVs? I'll tell you why... because those people buy shit loads of games. I mean, if they've got the cash for a huge TV I'd say the likely hood that they have the cash for a decent game collection is good.
      • Plus those are the coveted early adopters who tell their friends which console to buy, and they're not going to be recommending the Revolution if it can't do HD.

        Plus, how is the Revolution supposed to compete when sites like IGN do their "Head to Head" articles where they compare a game available for multiple platforms to tell you which is the best version to buy? I can see them slating the Revolution's graphics for being low-res and indistinct now...

        As much as I love Nintendo's games, they really do seem

      • Re:Your argument is flawed... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Jacius ( 701825 ) on Sunday June 12, 2005 @02:13PM (#12796439)
        But your counter-argument is flawed: the vast majority of people are not filthy rich.

        Imagine that 5% of the gaming market has HD TVs, with 95% having SD (we'll assume that everyone in the game market has some sort of TV, or they couldn't play games).

        Even if the top 5% bought more games than the other 95%, they would have to buy 19 games for every 1 game the rest bought, in order to give Nintendo the same profits as the non-HD crowd.

        Now consider that many a significant portion of the non-HD group has enough money to buy several games per year. They will, for the most part, therefore be more selective in what games they buy, getting mostly games they have heard good things about from other gamers.

        If the 95% are buying several popular games per year per person/family, what other games will the 5% buy to fill up their quota, which is now 19 * "several" (maybe 2-5) per year per person, or 38-95 games per year? We can assume that they will buy the popular games as well, but will they buy crappy games too, just because they had the money to spend? Probably not. Will they buy multiple copies of the popular games? Almost certainly not.

        So you see, the wealthy, HD-using minority just can't out-spend the non-HD-using majority, because there are only so many games to choose from, and the minority is vastly outnumbered.

        Not to mention that, because the Revolution will not be HD, it will be affordable to more people (who wouldn't use HD even if it had it). Additionally, because the games will not be HD, they will be cheaper to develop, and thus presumably can be priced lower, making them affordable to more people.

        So here's the equation:
        SD games * huge game market - small development cost > HD games * tiny game market - large development cost
        In words: Nintendo will (probably) make more money than they would by supporting HD.

  • Bogus Article (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    IGN's article refers to emails sent by Nintendo, but since when does Nintendo directly report system capabilities to IGN?

    • Re:Bogus Article (Score:2, Informative)

      by DarKnyht ( 671407 )
      Possibly since IGN and Nintendo inked a partnership. This would also be why IGN has the Nintendo Minute with the CEOs of the company.
  • Having seen the old GameCube with digital out in action on a large HDTV, I can honestly say I'm not too disapointed by this decision. The games still look wondeful. Just don't sit closer than 3 feet from the television.
  • I can see the consumer bearing a heavier burden for a HD-compatible box, as it would not only require the interface electronics but a lot beefier GPU in order to handle the higher resolution. But exactly what additional costs would it put on game developers? Maybe somewhat more detailed models, maybe more megabytes for finer textures, but these aren't heavy costs compared to creating the games in the first place. The models nowadays are already way more detailed than 480i requires, since the computer ver
    • the expensive and difficult job of tuning the game engine so it can keep up full framerate at HD resolution, higher resolution means more pixels to calculate every frame, and if you start dropping frames your game looks like crap on a console, PC gamers accept slowdowns because their hardware can be replaced and settings tweaked, a console isd supposed to just work, and we aren't playing NES anymore, slowdowns really are not acceptable

  • HD? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Lars T. ( 470328 ) <Lars.Traeger@COW ... minus herbivore> on Saturday June 11, 2005 @01:56PM (#12790018) Journal
    As long as most people think that (copies of) VHS is good enough quality, HD is going nowhere.
  • 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 dire

    • Re:This seems like a dumb move. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Karma Farmer ( 595141 ) on Saturday June 11, 2005 @02:39PM (#12790239)
      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.

      No, they didn't. The FCC made the rollout to digital more aggressive, not high definition. Those are two different things.

      Seriously, with the amount of confusion around television standards, I figure the marketing department at Nintendo will be perfectly justified slapping "HD compatible" on the side of the box, so that anyone who was going to buy a Nintendo won't have excuse not to buy it. Since the majority of Americans with HD televisions have never seen an HD signal on the box anyhow, they'll never know the difference.

      "Look! Mario looks so totally awesome in High Def on my TV! I can tell the difference, just like when I watch DVD's!"

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday June 11, 2005 @02:00PM (#12790041)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • not surprising (Score:3, Insightful)

    by teksno ( 838560 ) on Saturday June 11, 2005 @02:16PM (#12790111)
    this isnt that surprising...given the prototype that was shown, as well as nintendos track record of new technologies adoption...im sure every one remembers how popular the GC was for online play...

    nintendo doesnt like to move on "future technologies". they realize that in 4 or 5 years new next gen consoles will becoming out...and then they will implament what we today see as future technologies.

    this isnt a bad plan. this keeps the cost of their systems down and makes them able to compete while being profitable. right now people dont have massive HDTV's. early adopters do, but broke geeky gamers probably dont. and thats the majority of gamers...broke and rather geeky.

    yes HDTV is the future, just like online blay was, but at the time those technologies were expensive. i for one am not concerned.
    • Ummm... No, not insightful. Nintendo was the first console developer with- Analog sticks Rumble/Force feedback First pary wireless controllers (Now all 3 next gen consoles will have them) Console to handheld connection (Copied by Sony) (Not to mention whole new game genres like the 'Party Game' and the 'Kart Racing game' copied nauseum.) Yes, they dropped the ball big time on online play, which thankfully they are now embracing in a big way, but your premise that they don't like to "move on 'future tech
  • Many people already own monitors capable of at least 720p, and current sales of HDTVs are at 25% of all new TV's sold.

    In addition over the next year we are going to start seeing DVD players with HD resolution outputs.

    I sure am not going to buy into an SD console and games at this point in time.

    • Maybe 25% of the US market, but Europe and Japan buy more consoles than the US when combined. Add in smaller markets like Australia (where people don't care about your HDTV), and there's no reason to force everyone to buy it because 5 or 10% of American gamers could use it.

      If graphics really mattered, the XBox would be number 1, followed closely by the GameCube, with the PS2 coming in dead last. Graphics don't matter. If Nintendo can say to developers "you'll notice only a slight increase in development c

    • "Many people already own monitors capable of at least 720p,"

      My TV is bigger and is in the living room, where the seats are more comfortable.

      "and current sales of HDTVs are at 25% of all new TV's sold."

      How many television owners have purchased a TV in the past year? Or the past five years, for that matter? How do the sales of HDTVs compare to, say, RF modulators used to retrofit composite inputs into TVs even without that much?

      When it comes to appliances, short-term sales don't tell you anything abo
      • How many television owners have purchased a TV in the past year? Or in the past 5 years?

        Quite a few I would imagine since there are currently about 13-15 million US homes with HDTVs of one sort or another. The vast majority of these were sold in the past 4 years. These are a great market segment too, with people with disposable income and an interest in technology.

        Everybody is still replacing their VHS collection with NTSC DVDs.

        That conversion happened a long time ago.

        The only thing I see slowing d
  • They claim HD costs the developer more but with Microsoft and Sony already requiring that EVERY game on their platforms be in HD, it costs pretty much nothing for a cross-platform 3rd party game. So I suppose this means its only cheaper for Nintendo exclusive titles, which again is an example of Nintento's 1st party focus.
    • Of course, if the added cost of required HD support is significant, you may see the same developer publish the title ONLY on Revolution.

      The issues, then, are, "how significant is the cost increase," and, "are there enough Revs to make this worth my while?"

      Of course, Nintendo could be positioning the Revolution as the GameBoy of the next-gen market (just about every third party title gets a GBA release). This would turn into a case of 'no matter what other system you have, you also have a Rev', which mean
  • So long as the revolution will be televised, I'm happy.

  • Aw man (Score:4, Funny)

    by Bongo Bill ( 853669 ) on Saturday June 11, 2005 @04:35PM (#12790863) Homepage
    Now I won't be able to get an unnecessary improvement to graphics on a TV I don't own and can't afford. I hate Nintendo. Or should I say Nin¥do.
  • Does anyone see this as the same mistake they made with the Gamecube and online play? The GC having no online play hurts it marginally, but it is a segment of people that are more the type who play (and buy) loads of games. This is a segment they should try to make happy. I don't think the HD will hurt the Revolution much, but I think they are making a mistake. They have stated the the Revolution will have more online games, so I don't know if that is admiting they messed up with GC or that they think on

    • Re:Same mistake they made with online for Gamecube (Score:4, Insightful)

      by cowscows ( 103644 ) on Sunday June 12, 2005 @01:22PM (#12796100) Journal
      It wasn't a mistake. The PS2 won the last generation hands down, and its online abilites are not the least bit impressive. They had very little bearing on its success.

      Nintendo didn't have any problem selling most of their games. SuperSmashBros. online would've been cool, no doubt, but they sold tons of them anyways. I doubt that online capabilities would've pushed through a significant number of extra gamecubes.

      They're perfectly happy to sit back and watch stuff unfold, and learn from the mistakes and efforts of others. Expect the Revolution to learn a lot of lessons from XboxLive, as well as have some unique ideas from Nintendo. The technologies for online gaming are better, broadband is more widespread now, and like you said, online console gaming is ready to hit its prime.
  • You know, if I didn't love nintendo games, I would be laughing right now:

    First they shun CDs with the N64. Everybody thought that was a mistake way back when and lo and behold: it was! Nintendo swallows and goes mini-dvds the next generation but...

    They go shun online gaming and downplay tech specs (I erroneously thought for the longest time that the GC was inferior to the PS2) with the Gamecube. Everybody thought doing this was a stupid move and lo and behold: it was! Nintendo swallows again and starts r
    • Suck shit.

      Like most people out there in the real world who are older than 18 and into tech stuff, I have a big screen, excellent picture quality, has-ten-more-years-on-it sony trinitron. Why the fuck should I pay an extra $40 for my revolution so you can feel better about being suckered into buying a tv that serves only to hilight the dodgey compression in modern broadcasts and dvd?

      Regular resolution plus FSAA will sure as hell beat the pants off a high resolution, no AA display that runs at half the FPS
  • I don't have HDTV, and as far as I know I've never watched anything on an HDTV either, aside from maybe a few seconds while walking through Best Buy. But my question is will HDTV make video games all that much better? Sure movies and TV shows might benefit from improved clarity and resolution, but do video games need it? Would Super Mario Sunshine look any better if it had a few more pixels? How about Halo? It seems that enhanced resolution would only be useful for hyper-realistic pre-rendered movies wi

  • Let's assume that the whole thing is legit. What are the pros and cons of this decision?

    Pros:

    • The Revolution can achieve better graphics using lesser hardware than the other two consoles. It needs less memory since, for example, textures can have a lower resolution, so the console itself will be cheaper to manufacture.
    • Development will be cheaper, although I guess the difference won't be vast. And if you have games appearing on all consoles, you will have to spend the money either way, but Revolution ver
  • Up to now from what we can tell the Revolution will be marketed as a low-cost console, accessible to the casual gamer on a budget (apart from the cost, the downloadable classics come to mind). Most people who will buy it probably won't have the money to blow on a fucking HDTV screen.
  • but here goes nintendo telling us again that a lack of a feature is actually a benefit. HD-quality graphics will still work on normal TVs, so it's not like using them will alienate the non-HD audience. My favorite is how it will be easier on the developers, though. I'm sure all of the home-brew developers out there for PC games have found high resolutions a real hindrance. This will be a certain boon for all of the artists at game companies who will finally have reason to cheer that they can easily move the

  • It's about game devlopment (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rAiNsT0rm ( 877553 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @08:28AM (#12801934) Homepage
    The big news here is the leg up that Nintendo will have in development support. Developing in HD from the ground up is hugely time consuming, expensive, and intensive on everyone involved. As a result the Xbox 360 (which requires only HD development) and PS3 (to a little lesser extent) will have very limited game availability throughout their lifespan. Game development costs are going to be so high that only the big studios will be able to produce content... so get ready for sports, sports, and more sports (yay!) and licensed titles en masse. Also timetables for development grow exponentially with the HD content, so less games will be produced. The Revolution is going to have a three fold advantage here: Retro titles, low development cost for regular titles, and opening the development up to some degree to hobbyists and small developers (remember shareware days and where Doom came from...) These advantages are huge. Not to mention lower console cost (possible to integrate into A/V equipment), less complex for families and those who don't want the cumbersome setups of the other consoles, innovative controller (which is yet to be seen), and the quality hardware and software that Nintendo is known for. For all the HD elitests, go ahead buy your expensive PS3 and Xbox to go with your expensive TV (of which there is still no full standard on and could be rendered useless in the blink of an eye) and play your sports titles and movie licensed titles, and sequel after stale sequel... I'll happily be enjoying a massive library of fun titles, new titles, new spins on old favorites, and the next Carmack, or ID with the open development. HD means nothing when the game is solid. In fact it means less, I want to be pulled into the game and immersed, not looking at the wonderful bump mapping. That's why Tetris, and Katamari Damacy do their jobs so well... not because it is HD. Let's get back to the games, and focusing on fun and new ideas, that is what the Revolution is all about.

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