During E3 2005, Nintendo focused on an aspect that they felt needed to be addressed to every game company and every gamer out there. Reggie himself claimed that Nintendo is a "and" company and not a "either/or" company. They cater to everyone regardless if your a core gamer, a casual gamer, and they will even try to cater to the non-gamers.
Despite the comment above, gamers everywhere started to question Reggie's integrity when Perrin Kaplan of NOA was quoted saying "It is accurate that at this time we will not support high-definition [on Revolution]." Apparently, after hearing of this quote, it is obvious and crystal clear that Nintendo is a "either/or" company and supporting gamers of all types is nothing more then a marketing gimmick being employed by them.
Now, some will say that I'm being too quick to judge and that this can be changed without notice. Let me clarify that I don't care. What I do care about, however, is that this is their current motive as of right now and that supporting HDTV gamers is not part of that motive. That is a problem, regardless, including for a machine that claims to be a "Revolution" for gaming. You can't be "Revolutionary" if your motives are still archaic. You can't be part of a "Revolution" if you don't embrace the current, innovative, ideas of present day technology. Period.
What really makes this sadistic is that Nintendo is a hardware manufacturer, and yet they don't embrace these new ideas that can take gaming to a whole new level of clarity and picture quality. Which has been something that has been constantly improving every generation. Factor Five's (Creator of the Rogue Squadron Series) Eggebrecht was quoted saying, "It's a little bit sad that as a hardware manufacturer you wouldn't be embracing that (HD) because quite frankly it's exciting."
You have to really wonder, is Nintendo already alienating consumers before they even thought about purchasing their next home console? The Revolution is designed to look like a high-end electronics component, but it lacks a major element of other next-generation systems, which is high-definition support. For whatever reasons, Nintendo refused to embrace online gaming which resulted them losing customers and third parties alike. It's almost like Nintendo is repeating the same mistake again, except in a different scenario. Will it backfire on them in the long-run? Microsoft seems to think so.
"We're committed to delivering a product that caters to the needs of our consumers. To develop a console devoid of HD capability would be to alienate an important facet of the industry," says Microsoft's Henshaw. "High Definition is gaining momentum extremely quickly and we've developed advanced technologies that ensure that our games look great on standard definition television sets as well as HDTV sets. We're not limiting our audience by delivering to one quadrant of society. We want to ensure that everyone, whether they own an HD or standard definition set, gets the most out of the experience."
Now, some of you are going to say "How does it benefit gaming?" and "Why do both Microsoft and Sony embrace it?". Factor Five's Eggebrecht says, "I'm personally extremely excited for high-definition. I think for this generation it's the biggest step. Visuals will improve in general, but at the same time what we're finally getting is a definitive 16x9 picture, which makes a huge difference. High-definition makes a huge difference, even gameplay wise. You can suddenly see a lot of things, especially in the distance, that you couldn't before. You can see a lot more detail that is lost in the old resolution. It's the most important step for this transition of consoles."
As you can see, high-definition gaming IS part of gaming's future and for Nintendo to ignore it completely is a flawed step towards the wrong direction. We, as Nintendo gamers, need to step up and let Nintendo know that this decision is flawed and they need to reconsider. We need to send E-Mails, we need to write editorials on different forums, we need to educate other gamers on why HD is important. Most importantly, we need to show Nintendo that there is plenty of people who do want HD gaming and they shouldn't be neglected at the end of the day.
