Nintendo Finally Going HD With New Console?

06 Nov 2009 at 11:37:52 by Gunnar Petzall

Nintendo has announced it will be moving some productions to HD quality in a recent press conference.

"We probably cannot swim against the tide," said Shigeru Miyamoto, implying a change is inevitable. 

"The customers' tastes will become more and more refined. Even today, many customers who have seen HD once say they cannot go back to SD... When the majority of people around us say it is OK, we are content with the situation."

Research and development manager Genyo Takeda added: "Since an increasing number of the TV sets at home around the world are becoming HD today, it will be natural for a machine to be able to generate graphics that people will be accustomed to see on HD televisions. Since the ordinary TV programs are now shifting to HD, moving to HD appears to me a natural flow."

Not all games will take the high definition route, however. Costs will increase if games are made in HD, and certain games don't need that extra edge.

Takeda explains saying "[f]or example, we have to ask ourselves if HD is really necessary to develop 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."

Takeda said his department has been looking into "many different things, including HD and SD," and while there won't be any announcements yet, things are heading in a HD direction.

***UPDATE*** Nintendo of America's Reggie Fils-Aime has been quite vocal about HD, and has wanted to make it clear that the HD side of things will not incorporate the Wii.  Speaking to GameTrailers.TV (via Kotaku), Fils-Aime has said "Michael [Pachter] continues to be the only one who believes that this is gonna happen. I don't know how forcefully we can say there is no Wii HD."

So whatever the Nintendo team are doing, it seems like it'll be a new console rather than an upgrade to the Wii.

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