Miyamoto said that the penetration of HDTVs is "really not that high yet...we thought it would be better to create a system that allows you to interact with any TV set you have in your home in an entirely new, different way, and even kind of turn that into a toy for your TV that anyone can pick up, interact with and enjoy - rather than only the people who have a very high-tech, specific kind of TV set."
The numbers support this assertion - the United States has by far the highest uptake of HDTVs in the world, and yet it's estimated that only 10% of US households have a HDTV set, and about 3% of TVs currently in use are HD (since most households have more then one TV). The projections by US firm Leichtman Research Group Inc suggest that even by 2010, 45% of households will still not have a single HD set.
Miyamoto continued, "If you look at the technology that's out there and the companies that Nintendo has partnerships with when creating the system, obviously if we had decided to create a HD system we could have very easily. But a video game isn't just graphics. A video game is a combination of the interface you use to interact with the game, a combination of the graphics, the sound, perhaps the network... We thought at this time going in the HD direction was leaning too much to the graphics."
He finished by saying that Nintendo wasn't against HD, and that their next console after the Wii would support it: "Of course I think five years down the road it would be pretty much a given that Nintendo would create a HD system, but right now the predominant television set in the world is a non-HD set."
So there we have it, Nintendo's reasons for not offering HD resolutions yet. While hardcore gamers, who are also usually techies may not like the idea, it does make some sense. Now if only Plasma and LCD panels had better upscaling on SD images, everyone would be fine.
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