Wii Confirmed at 480p

Eurogamer is reconfirming that the Wii only outputs at 480p, after the official Nintendo magazine mistakenly said otherwise. From the article: "Nintendo UK also recently said that it had every intention of releasing peripherals like the component cable — used to achieve the 480p resolution — at retail, despite suggestions that you'd have to buy the cables through online shops in the US. The interest in Wii's high-resolution options is of course spurred on by Microsoft and Sony's battling over the higher end. Both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 generally offer games in 720p, with 1080p now possible for developers who want to go the extra mile (well, the extra 1,152,000 pixels, anyway)."

Does resolution matter?

[LehiNephi]

It would be interesting to know how much of the video game market consists of people with HDTVs that actually do 720p/1080whatever. This also leads me to ask: "Does resolution really matter?" For some games, I'm sure it makes a difference, but I'd be willing to bet that high resolution won't make any difference to a large majority of gamers in a large number of titles.

Keeping to 480p seems like a good move by Nintendo. Many (I'd even go so far as to say most) of their games will be just as fun, you don't need a fancy TV just to enjoy it, and (perhaps most importantly) it keeps part cost, size, and power requirements down.

I was watching my teenage brother-in-law play Zelda (I don't recall which) on his gamecube the other day. The graphical style of the game was very effective, and I think it would actually lose appeal going to higher resolution.

Now all you experts can respond and tell me why I'm totally wrong.

Re:Does resolution matter?

[Cereal Box]

Well, ask yourself this: do you think 640x480 is still an acceptable PC gaming resolution or do you see benefit in higher resolutions?

Another thing you should consider is that the Wii is going to stick around for what, five years or so? The 480p graphics will look absolutely primitive by then (I would argue they do right now), and the fact is that HDTV adoption is on the rise, and more and more households will have them in five year's time. Nintendo should've at least allowed the possibility of 720p/1080i output in order to "future-proof" the console.

Re:Not even capable of what the original XBOX can

[ben there...]

That doesn't even make sense to me. When you're talking movies, they are shot on film at 24fps progressive. So say 720p24 for film. Then on DVD it is encoded as either 720p24 or telecined to 720i60, where 60 refers to fields (1/2 frames). NTSC TV is usually recorded at 720i60, which displays as 60 fields per second, which equals 30 frames per second.

HD movies would be sourced to film still, at 1080p24, and there is no reason to encode or display them at any higher frame rate. The data is not there. Every HDTV broadcast I've seen has been 1080p30, which is equivalent to 1080i60. Same number of pixels once the 60 fields are deinterlaced to 30 frames.

Games could theoretically output 1080p60, which would be twice as many pixels as 1080i60, but from what I've read so far, you need the latest version of HDMI, 1.3, to even support that bandwidth. Does the PS3 use HDMI 1.3? I'm sure the Xbox didn't. The 360 probably doesn't.

If we're talking a full 60 frames of 1080p, it has more pixels. Still not for movies, which are still recorded at 24fps, but possibly for games. Short of that, this whole discussion about pixels is meaningless.

Re:Does resolution matter?

[twistedsymphony]

I agree... HD resolutions is one of those things that if you don't have it, you don't need, it but once you've lived with it for a while you'd have a very hard time going back... like upgrading from a ball mouse to an optical or laser. Or from a corded phone to a cordless. Or a wired controller to a wireless, etc. etc.

I don't watch tv, I don't have anything beyond basic cable for the news, and I certainly don't pay for HD service, I have an HDTV purely to play my games. IMO resolution might not add to the gameplay but widescreen certainly does, it literally ads an extra 33% of viewable area. HD, while not a necessity is beneficial when playing any game that would split up the screen, or any game with a lot of menus and text (like an RPG or other games with deep strategy or text driven gameplay). Text can be incredibly difficult to read on an SD display unless it takes up a substantial footprint on the screen to keep it from being blurred into oblivion.

Anyone who said HD resolutions don't matter, I encourage you to set the resolution on your PC monitor to 640x480 (essentially 480p)... then use that for a few days, come back and tell me how beneficial higher resolutions are.

There are cases where HD and Widescreen don't actually add anything to a game over SD (480i) resolutions, however I can't think of a single instance where HD and or Widescreen took something away from the gaming experience. That is to say most games will be OK in SD, but ALL games will be OK in HD. The GP talked about Zela (which is Cell Shaded) the game wouldn't have lost anything being in HD, it simply would have looked more crisp, clean, and vivid.

After watching content in HD, going back to SD or ED resolutions is like sticking a screen door in front of your screen, you can still play it and it doesn't take away from the gameplay it's just not as visually appealing. And while visual appeal isn't a necessity, neither is playing video games, it's all about what makes you happy.

Re:Resolutions

[Swanktastic]

Yours is an interesting post. I would add one point though.

I tend to sit much closer to my television when I'm playing games than when I'm watching TV- the whole lean forward vs. lean back interaction... I'd estimate maybe 5 feet vs. 10 feet, respectively. I'm not sure if this is common or not, but it could explain why folks care more about resolution when gaming.