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Nintendo Gaming / High Dollar Generation
« on: December 08, 2005, 06:24:57 AM »
Half of HDTV owners aren't getting HD. I hate articles that link to articles that link to articles. Crazy enterweb!
So half of all HDTV owners aren't even receiving HD broadcasts, and a quarter of HDTV owners thought they were receiving such broadcasts when they weren't. Do these results surprise anyone? It's clear that the whole HD campaign has been bungled from the start, hence the repeatedly delayed digital broadcast switch-over. From the poor in-store demos to the tepid adoption of HD by content providers and distributors to the techonology ignorance of the new wealthy, the result is a fumblebuck of a push towards the eventual standard.
So how does the Xbox 360 fit into this mess? Will the 360 be the needed push that opens peoples' eyes to the wonder of HD? Despite HD being the cornerstone of the 360's launch (marketing-wise), and despite the 360 being bundled with a component cable, will ignorance still reign supreme? You can call me a fanboy for stating this [plain truth], but I've always seen a large share of Xbox users as being ignorant in general (anyone here played on Xbox Live?). They're either PC gamers who've just 'rediscovered' console gaming since the NES days. Or people who got the best system to show off their phat TV. The irony being the fuzzy, washed out display of the Xbox, and the near absence of games that support HD, making it graphically moot in my opinion. Yes, I think the GameCube has the best output, and the graphics to match it.
Are things different this time around (...
) for the 360? Are the early adopters the enlightened ones? I don't think actual graphics do matter at all, I don't think anyone not visiting games forums can tell the difference. This could be advantageous for the Revolution. Nintendo needs to show that their graphics look as good as the competition's. They need to push the bigger developers to support 704x480 progressive, which the Revolution will be capable of as the GameCube is. With this as a 'semi-standard' I think the average mainstream gamer would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between this and HD games (see PGR3, rendered at below Microsoft's mandated standard of 1280x720, yet people are still falling over themselves for it). At least where developers are familiar with the GameCube's API and still learning multi-thread, in-order code the Revolution could compete early in the 'horsepower race' without throwing away money. This could be enough of a foothold to earn a place alongside the 360 and PS3 in the 'core' market. From there Nintendo can focus on expanding into the 'mass' market.
Of course this is highly dependent on getting the Revolution to the market on time. With an expected launch of late 2006, that strategy has less hope as gamers will be too impressed with teh mature grafix of the 360 and possibly PS3. It is also highly dependent on dispelling the tiku tiku tiku! myth of Nintendo systems. They've at least started off on a good foot with the aesthetic engineering of the system. Can they capitalize on this? Otherwise they're left to sell the system on the novelty of the controller alone. I think they'd fare much better if they had an ally in something more familiar to gamers than originality: screenshots.
So half of all HDTV owners aren't even receiving HD broadcasts, and a quarter of HDTV owners thought they were receiving such broadcasts when they weren't. Do these results surprise anyone? It's clear that the whole HD campaign has been bungled from the start, hence the repeatedly delayed digital broadcast switch-over. From the poor in-store demos to the tepid adoption of HD by content providers and distributors to the techonology ignorance of the new wealthy, the result is a fumblebuck of a push towards the eventual standard.
So how does the Xbox 360 fit into this mess? Will the 360 be the needed push that opens peoples' eyes to the wonder of HD? Despite HD being the cornerstone of the 360's launch (marketing-wise), and despite the 360 being bundled with a component cable, will ignorance still reign supreme? You can call me a fanboy for stating this [plain truth], but I've always seen a large share of Xbox users as being ignorant in general (anyone here played on Xbox Live?). They're either PC gamers who've just 'rediscovered' console gaming since the NES days. Or people who got the best system to show off their phat TV. The irony being the fuzzy, washed out display of the Xbox, and the near absence of games that support HD, making it graphically moot in my opinion. Yes, I think the GameCube has the best output, and the graphics to match it.
Are things different this time around (...
) for the 360? Are the early adopters the enlightened ones? I don't think actual graphics do matter at all, I don't think anyone not visiting games forums can tell the difference. This could be advantageous for the Revolution. Nintendo needs to show that their graphics look as good as the competition's. They need to push the bigger developers to support 704x480 progressive, which the Revolution will be capable of as the GameCube is. With this as a 'semi-standard' I think the average mainstream gamer would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between this and HD games (see PGR3, rendered at below Microsoft's mandated standard of 1280x720, yet people are still falling over themselves for it). At least where developers are familiar with the GameCube's API and still learning multi-thread, in-order code the Revolution could compete early in the 'horsepower race' without throwing away money. This could be enough of a foothold to earn a place alongside the 360 and PS3 in the 'core' market. From there Nintendo can focus on expanding into the 'mass' market.Of course this is highly dependent on getting the Revolution to the market on time. With an expected launch of late 2006, that strategy has less hope as gamers will be too impressed with teh mature grafix of the 360 and possibly PS3. It is also highly dependent on dispelling the tiku tiku tiku! myth of Nintendo systems. They've at least started off on a good foot with the aesthetic engineering of the system. Can they capitalize on this? Otherwise they're left to sell the system on the novelty of the controller alone. I think they'd fare much better if they had an ally in something more familiar to gamers than originality: screenshots.
