Nintendo might be considering hybrid HD/SD console

by JC Fletcher on Nov 5th 2009 4:27PM

In a voluminous response to an investor question about moving to support high-definition output, Nintendo executives laid out their current thoughts on how and when to make such a move in their consoles. Of course, these thoughts shouldn't be taken as a definite indicator of Nintendo's plans, but they might suggest where the company could be headed in the next generation. And if these statements do reflect future events, Nintendo's next console will be HD-capable, but won't require that standard for every game.

Genyo Takeda, GM of Nintendo's Integrated Research & Development Division, said that "moving to HD appears to me a natural flow" given the adoption of HD by television programming. "If we can find out the most appropriate medium, between SD and HD, and flexibly move around them depending on the game's contents, it will be good, I think," he suggested. Shigeru Miyamoto agreed, noting that HD wasn't the most important consideration for something like Wii Fit. "Won't HD be better for the games like Pikmin? The developers should choose the most appropriate graphical format depending on the software they make."

Source

Tags: design, development, genyo-takeda, hardware, hd, high-definition, miyamoto, Nintendo, research, sd, shigeru-miyamoto, standard-definition, Wii

Reader Comments (78)

Nintendo might be a lot of things.

I hope they do go to HDTV's. It'll probably make that mass casual crowd feel like their TV's dated so they'll buy new ones and then we see a drop in HDTV prices...

Sounds to me like they are aiming the bar to be just barely capable of HD graphics or capable of very component SD graphics. Aka, sometimes akin to almost an xbox 360s power and low-balling the performance specs in favour of a cheap introductory price.

It's pretty much what they did with the Nintendo Wii. Its like a regular xbox pretty much give or take 30%. I wouldn't be suprrised if they took the same tactic consider how much money they've made off the Wii. Releaseing Semi-outdated technology and charging high prices with low supply. I'm suspecting they'll try to make the Wii 2 or whatever they call it like 80-110% an xbox 360 but offer a relatively cheap price since the technology cost has gone down. I'm guessing like around $300.00 to $250.00. By that time in a year or two, the cost of the hardware should be down to around $150.00 and they'll make quite a bit off each console.

Meanwhile, the xbox and ps3 equivilents will be substantially faster with less profit or at a small loss. Casuals will choose the Wii and Wii will pretend to be hardcore. More serious gamers and hardcore gamers will choose the next xbox/ps3?

The mass casual crowd has HDTVs...

It's the mass hardcore crowd that doesn't.

So it's good news for those without HDTVs.

michael pachter actually predicted this was going to happen (he coined the term wii-HD) anyways if this does happen to be true, it'll be the first time he's right.

@Wes
I'm fairly certain the Gamecube was more powerful than the original xbox.

Need proof? Twilight Princess.

@KaBob799:

Uh, no. That game was beast, but no.

I direct you to the Xbox versions of Splinter Cell, especially 3. That one had amazing graphics, and nothing the Gamecube had matched it.

Nintendo should promote HD because it will move the market forward if ALL console manufacturers support it. Not only that, it may give developers more incentive to try harder on their console. Of course, they wouldn't force it on developers, so it may be slow progress, but some nonetheless.

Oh well, I don't have an HDTV so I can't really reap the benefits. However, I won't lie, unlike Nintendo's claim, I do notice a big difference on an SDTV between my 360 games and Wii games in terms of graphics. Not that it destroys the experience at all.

Why are you arguing about the last generation of consoles? It's already been proven that the GameCube had the best GPU.

I dunno why. Something to do. Why does anyone debate the specs of a system? There's no point.

And, was it ever proven? Based upon sheer observation, I'd say "maybe."

Give me HD Zelda, HD Smash Brothers, HD Mario Kart and I'll still buy your console!

Yino what would be a good for the wii? Pikmin
Yino what else would be good? Kid Icarus
Donkey Kong would be awesome too
or a new Yoshi Game
Hey how about a Star Fox
and a Kirby
an F-Zero
or like hey what about an Earthbound
I'm beginning to realize how long this list is
Seriously thought, Pikmin (y) you even announced it.

If they are going to do HD Wii they better do it right. Copy Microsoft and MANDATE things.

Some wii games have widescreen support , some don't, some have Progressive scan, some don't, some have classic controller or gamecube support and some refuse too.

I know they don't want tie the hands of publishers, but please have basic standards.

Does Wii ft 3 need HD graphics no? but does that give them the excuse to make a shitty looking game?

STOP BEING LAZY NINTENDO.

Mandating things is very much against Nintendo's philosophy. If you look at their own first party games, you can see as such.

There is some merit to it. No reason to shoe-horn something in if it doesn't fit, but then it leads to stuff like the abysmal lack of Wii Speak in games that could use it, but the point is that developers don't have to do anything they're not willing to do.

Plus, if they get a good hardware-side scaling chip (like that ANA thing 360 has), it won't make as much of a difference.

Mandating things WAS Nintendo's philosophy Khan. What do you think the seal of quality used to be? Nintendo was notoriously one of the most strict first party companies when it came to licensing games for play on their consoles. Just look at the Nintendo 64 and their use of cartridge format.

That's different. That was just about regulating frequency and quality of software. They didn't say to all NES developers "your game must have 2 player mode" or "your game must have lithium battery saving" or "your game must have pass-codes," this mandating of features is what we're discussing.

Exactly, so stepping things up a notch wouldn't be such a drastic change as you are making it out to be. Mandating features in order to gain a license is the next step.

By the time this comes out, you don't think every development studio in the world will be accustomed to easily rendering in HD after a whole generation of experience with the PS3 and 360? The only thing that mandating HD would do is hamper the ability of shovelware devs to pour out 6 games a year, maybe reining them in to 2-3 games instead.

I agree that some things should definitely be mandated.
HD should be mandatory, as should widescreen support. Make 4:3 optional.
SOME sort of online connectivity should be mandatory, too.

I don't think they should be mandating things like alternate control schemes or more personal details, though.

But yeah...this lack of general standards Nintendo currently has with the Wii is getting them shat all over. It seems to be working just fine with the DS, though.

Yeah, mandating classic or gamecube controls on wii games is the most retarded thing I've read all day.

´´SOME sort of online connectivity should be mandatory, too. ´´

Why?

Mandatory waggle, Oh yeh.

´´SOME sort of online connectivity should be mandatory, too. ´´

Not if it's useless, take for example Tales of Vesperia, they sell freakin level ups and items, completely useless. SCIV sold darth vader, exclusive to the ps3 (and viceversa with yoda in the ps3).

HD and widescreen should be mandatory, but other than that, like gamecube controllers FOR A WII GAME, is useless.

There isn't enough duct tape in the world for this new contraption from Nintendo.

i heard they'll be experimenting with superglue this time

Yes, HD would be better for games like Pikmin. But considering how simplistic WiiFit's visuals are, what would it hurt to present the game in HD?

This just lends to them making their next console another marginal upgrade with few noticeable differences in performance outside of Nintendo's main franchise games. Bring back the seal of quality and make it a stipulation that all games must be at least 720p compatible and output in 5.1 digital surround. I'm tired of Nintendo's transitional phases.

What about those of us who don't have HD TV's or 5.1 surround? Just because you have it, doesn't mean everyone does. Along side, mandating is what fucks up developers. Did you know Halo 3 didn't support 720p even though it was mandated? Then Microsoft dropped that standard. A games creation should be upto the dev and publishers (mostly devs), not the fucking console makers. I mean Microsoft's manditory online play and graphics is what fucked up Darwinia being on the Xbox untill now, and made the developers hate the game.

What about those of us who don't have HD TV's or 5.1 surround?

Plug it into an older TV and play it at 480i it's not fucking rocket science. You're saying because some people don't adapt to current technology the rest of the world needs to be stuck with shitty graphics?

HD is so common now that it really is the new Standard. SD should stand for 'Shit Definition' instead of 'Standard Definition'

Have you tried playing Dead Rising on a 480i TV? The text is near impossible to read. Text scaling is a major issue.

So Dead Rising looking bad on a 480i TV is a fault of the console makers and NOT the devs? WTF?

My XBOX works just as well on my HDTV with 5.1 as my 27" CRT in stereo.

NIRDD huh? ;)

Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo....your just saying that your going to release an HD console capable of multiple resolutions?

Yeah, i don't see what's so odd about this. 360 does it, PS3 does it, all sorts of things do

My guess is that they were discussing mandating the use of features in software, like Adv2k1 noted above, and not about hardware. If you can display 480i/p and 720p, that's called being a hybrid HD/SD device.

one thing is being able to display right in 480p and 720p, but another is that is displayed right

I can play ps3 games on my sd tv, but i have a hell of a time reading some times cuz 480i its not supported like it has while i had no problem reading on all wii games.

man, i had a hard time figuring out what button and which directional arrow had to be pressed so i could use the secondary fire on my weapons in army of 2 and how to swtich weapons on lost planet, and thats cuz resolution its not nice to letters

So, will it crapscale or render older games natively in HD like emulators do?

Probably scale them... even though as you know it's completely possible (and not that hard if using similar hardware) to render games in higher resolutions.

Xbox and PS3 games are scaled a lot...

"HOMG THIS GAME IZ 1080P"

when really it's really rendered around (or way under.. think Halo 3) 720p
When it comes to that though, all I can think to say is "Thank Al Gore for the internet and anti-aliasing!"
Now.. I wonder if all Wii games are actually rendered at 640x480 or if they're scaled up to that... Hmmmmmmmmmm

If there's one thing I've learned this generation, it's standardization is a must.

PS3 and Xbox standardized widescreen output, for great justice. MS rolled out the gate with achievements standard, PS3 standardized Trophies later on. Cross game chat for Xbox is mandatory. Hard drive for PS3? Mandatory.

The current Wii's "widescreen if you feel like it" is a cop out. Doubling that level of fail to include high definition would be a step backwards.

Of course, Nintendo's doing just fine as is...

It might be easier for them to hard-wire this sort of thing in next-time, if they actually have an OS for their console (which they most likely will)

They most likely wont. They have to use the same OS for backwards compat. They've screwed themselves

Oh, like how you need Windows 98 to play Fallout 1? You can upgrade an OS.
Also do you know what making widescreen the standard did for most games? IT ruined the models. Most models look like shit, and then they use that horrible brown filter to cover it up.

Also do you know what making widescreen the standard did for most games? IT ruined the models.

That makes no sense, at all. lrn2rendering

Dear Nintendo,

Please increase your consoles resolution, so your games will stop looking fuzzy on my nice TV.

Thank You.

We had something between SD and HD, it's called ED (or Enhanced Definition). It ran at 480p (720×480 progressive scan) and 576p (720×576 progressive scan). It sucked.

I really don't see any difference between 480p and 480i , I mean its the same resolution. Progressive scan really doesn't help make things look better in most situations.

I don't think they mean "hybrid HD/SD" so much as ... some games will use the extra power of the next system to render high detail games like Pikmin in HD, while other games will not really have much detail or high resolution textures or any of that stuff, but still render in HD.

I hope as a benchmark, next-gen consoles will actually render all games in 1080P natively, not upscaled.

I don't care what you just said, but epic avatar is epic.

Maybe Sony's and Microsoft's will - MAYBE - but I'm willing to bet Nintendo's won't. After the success of the Wii they would be absolutely insane to launch their next-gen system with the kind of top-of-the-line beast of a graphics chip required to even consider this - and with the corresponding price (which would be similar to PS3/60 launch this gen).

My guess would be a system which is native 720p (or 1080) and can scale so that developers can make lower-res games if necessary, like they do now on 360/PS3. Hopefully that's what they mean. Frankly it sounds like they don't know what they're talking about - hopefully at least the hardware people at the company do...

I doubt even the next Sony/MS systems will mandate that games run at 1080p. Maybe more games will, but maybe the bump to 720p (from about 600p or whatever it normally is now) will be enough - fact is, if you can choose between graphics that are stupendously awesome (at 720p) and graphics that are just awesome (at 1080p), the vast majority of people will prefer the former. Or you could be looking at 60fps 720p vs 30fps 1080p. I know which I'd choose there, too.

So they will make a HD system that can still play current Wii games (just like the current Wii plays Game Cube games). Their plan is to let casual minigames collections and HD games be released at the same time? Kind of like PS3 and PS2 does except they can be played on one system. Sounds like a great plan, actually. I'll buy one now!

Yet they do make a good point, why make your console have the latest in HD when your consumer does not have everything in HD? Sony was pushing Blu Ray because of their console, Microsoft was pushing HD because of the current tech transition would eventually be HD, but remember: before last year's mandatory digital broadcast mandate, there wasn't much of a reason to get anything HD. Most consumers had anything from an old school CRT to a Flat panel tv, with most having CRT's that have only component connections on their devices.
My parents upgraded to an flat panel only because the programming was going to go to digital. I know people who did not do the tv upgrade and are stuck with the conversion box to watch tv. For these people, they don't need to worry about HD because their tvs do not support past 480p or 576p (for my PAL friends).

I can't tell you how many times I walk into any electronic store and hear about people still not knowing what HD is, what an HDMI cable is, and why they need to spend so much just to get the current tech. The move towards all things HD is a large part due to said digital broadcast mandate and the next-gen DVD format war.

If the digital disc format wars had occurred in 2009 instead of years earlier, we would all have transitional consoles from all of the Big Three. Also, think about what would have happened if HD DVD won the format war instead of Blu Ray. Would Sony's position in the market still make sense? Would it even be the same? Sure Nintendo could have chosen either HD DVD or Blu Ray or gone with the conversion process the X360 uses to present HD off of a DVD disc, but think about the problems entailed with energy throughput, maintaining structural integrity throughout the entire motherboard and other connections, and don't even start with the Heat output issues this generation's HD consoles produce.

In the grand scheme of things, Nintendo has increased a larger market of users because of their business model. We are seeing byproducts move onto other platforms such as the Zune HD, iPhone, and PSN, including the PSP platform, XBox Live and Arcade; these platforms all have a lot of different offerings as far as entertainment, story telling, and game play, regardless of what people say.

The fact is, Nintendo has created a revolution in how we think of video gaming and play games, and it is spilling over into other areas of life. Just like all of you, I am a fan of video gaming. In the end, aren't we, the gaming consumers, benefiting from this generation's console wars?

So in other words, they want SD to let the shovelware still exist, and then HD to please the core gamers. Sounds like everyone wins.

Zelda and Metroid HD would be amazing! F Zero HD would be retina burningly awesome.

| 1 | 2 | Most Recent | Next 50 Comments

Sorry, you must be logged in to leave a comment.

Breaking News

The most popular posts
in the last 7 days

Report: Don't expect next-Xbox announcements this year 112 comments
EA's Origin has signed up 9.3 million players since launch 103 comments
Sony plans on $2.9 billion loss for the year 90 comments
Don't call it a remake: Final Fantasy X is a 'remaster,' to be clear 83 comments
PS Vita game downloads cheaper than boxed copies in US 80 comments

Nintendo might be considering hybrid HD/SD console

Reader Comments (78)

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 4:35PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 4:46PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 5:13PM EngadgetSoFunny said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 5:14PM STiger said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 5:22PM DeepFriedSushi said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 5:45PM KaBob799 said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 6:21PM RageOverdose said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 6:32PM STiger said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 6:49PM RageOverdose said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 4:37PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 8:57PM AntiVillian said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 4:39PM adv2k169 said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 4:44PM Mr Khan said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 4:47PM Granger said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 4:49PM Mr Khan said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 4:53PM Granger said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 5:05PM aristokrat said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 5:17PM samfish said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 7:28PM bm111 said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 11:42PM Roto13 said

Posted: Nov 6th 2009 12:27AM AntiVillian said

Posted: Nov 7th 2009 8:43AM matias said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 4:40PM Captain Planet Planeteer Power said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 5:28PM CJLopez said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 4:41PM Granger said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 5:48PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 6:15PM Giroro said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 6:57PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: Nov 6th 2009 1:23AM ksiddique said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 4:41PM Gombard said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 4:42PM Shagittarius said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 4:46PM Mr Khan said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 5:31PM CJLopez said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 4:43PM Extinction said

Posted: Nov 6th 2009 8:43AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 4:45PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 4:48PM Mr Khan said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 5:32PM Extinction said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 5:51PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 6:18PM Giroro said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 4:50PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 4:57PM DigitalFirefly said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 6:21PM Giroro said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 4:57PM JoshMilewski said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 5:00PM RKN said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 6:06PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 7:07PM xxxsam said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 6:23PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 5:07PM inbrightestday said

Posted: Nov 5th 2009 5:14PM mrmobius said

Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

Skyrim Creation Kit out on PC this Tuesday, with a 'surprise'

Featured Stories

Portabliss: Sticky Bees (iOS)

Now Playing: February 6-12, 2012

Sanctum 2 defends PC, consoles in 2013

The most popular postsin the last 7 days

Engadget

TUAW

Massively

WoW

The most popular posts
in the last 7 days