Do Gamers Really Need HDTV? 167
Gamasutra has up an article, their latest in the 'Analyze This' series, exploring whether gamers are really clamoring for the HD era ... or if the only people looking forward to HD gaming are the game makers. All three analysts seem to think HD is very important, but with varying levels of fervency. From the article: "On the Nintendo front, Nintendo has sacrificed graphics that can be viewed by the minority for a price that can benefit the majority. So, no, I don't think that they've made a mistake in the short run. Over the long run, we'll have to see: If HDTV adoption rates accelerate, the differences between the Wii and the Xbox 360 and PS3 may become more important, and it may end up that sell-through of the Wii begins to decline. That's a couple of years away, and my crystal ball isn't quite that clear."
Nintendo will eatch and adapt (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Nintendo will eatch and adapt (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the true test is going to be getting TV stations to broadcast in HD and to get less 4:3 content. This is a problem since most HDTVs are widescreen aspects, so the black bars are on the sides now, and that small widescreen TV looks even smaller with 4:3 content showing. I do think Nintendo was smart though. While Microsoft and Sony expect these things to last in the long haul, Nintendo can sit back and sell consoles without HD and make money. They can also avoid the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war and release their next console 4 or 5 years down the road (if not less) once a potential winner has been anounced. I think they are smart to avoid direct competition so as to avoid the fate of Sega.
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This is very insightful. By delaying the choice of which expensive technology to embrace, they leave themselves with the guaranteed lowest price point of all major console systems. Also, Nintendo has also traditionally held the children's market, and parents of young children are definitely more price sensitive than the average gamer.
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If you really want it to look decent, buy an external upconverter. It will resample the SD to HD. It will still be slightly blurry, but should be noticeably better than the upconverter in the TV you are using.
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I can't speak for the parent but if motion pictures work at 24 FPS and a (NTSC) TV screen refreshesh at 30 HZ (two scans at 60hz.) Even if a console can pull more than 30 FPS would it nost be wasted on a TV screen? So I am going to guess the first poster used 30FPS as a point of refrence to match consoles.
That would make sense. If you want to conduct an experiment (even a thought experiment) you make it a point to manipulate your variables descretely.
[snip comme
Re:Nintendo will eatch and adapt (Score:4, Informative)
You can say that 26% this year and 33+% next year isn't wide spread enough, but I beg to differ. Those are also the households with the disposable income to afford not only the console, but the real expense of accessories and games for it.
Nintendo is making a mistake. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't mean the games won't be fun, but based on perception alone they are missing a major marketing 'checkmark'.
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I think your argument can't be more wrong.
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10 are rich and can afford anything. 20 are semi rich and can afford most anything.
70 are poor and haveto make careful decisions on expenses...
If i made a product, I would make a product that is desireable and within reach of the bottom 70 people.
I'll make a crapload more money than anyone aiming for the top 30 based on sheer volume alone.
Maybe if you have some economics background you would have noticed that. Nintendo is going for the most common Denomoniator, poor and lower middle
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That would be awesome! But I'm sure the FCC would censor all that pr0n...
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IMHO, HDTV provides 4 major video improvements over "Standard Def" TV, or more precisely, over standard NTSC TV. These are:
1: Improved color model and accuracy. NTSC color is hideous (people say NTSC stands for Never The Same Color). HD's color system allows more accurate color, and more precise changes in the color from
...umm... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Exactly. HDTV is just bringing console gamers up to the resolutions PC gamers have been playing at for years.
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PC gamers sit 2 feet from their screen.
Console gamers sit 5 to 15 feet away from their screens.
It's a very different way of interacting with your game.
Heck, when I play games on my PC, I hardly ever play more than about 1280x1024 resolution. Beyond that, it doesn't provide significant improvements.
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I would sacrifice a big part of the resolution for better graphics often , as you don't see that much of a difference after 1024X768 compared to all the options you can put on to get the same framerate....
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It's stupid to hold televisions and monitors to the same standards because they evolved in very different directions. TV's got bigger and not clearer because the medium doesn't have a great emphasis on text or fine detail, and people enjoy their large home theaters. Monitors got clearer because no one needed the size when you are inches awa
Multiple monitors in PC gaming? (Score:2)
But do PC games support more than one monitor? Can I plug in four joypads and have players 1 and 2 look at monitor 1 and players 3 and 4 look at monitor 2?
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Just for a moment there, I thought you were going to say for HD Hockey broadcasts. I had my first experience with HD hockey on the weekend, and now I can't think of a better use of the technology.
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Don't tell me it's finally possible to see the puck!
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HD ladies Beach Volleyball
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Hell yes I want cheezy poofs!
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For a 15" monitor that's great, but for a 19" one, I'd hate to use anything less than 1600x1200.
But the real reason for high resolution isn't games (many games automatically reduce the resolution my PC is using), but programming. It's practical to have lots of information on your screen. For most games that aren't Stars!, that's not much of an issue.
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Some of us are still around. In fact, there's still a small but active community. Best 4X game ever, after all.
But to get this back on topic, the way games like Stars! are distributed can also be very effective: give away a free playable demo, and by entering an activation code, you can turn it into the complete game. Anyone can try it out, and by paying you get more. Most importantly the ability to play against others, which is what the game is all about.
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Do people really need tv at all? (Score:2)
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The problem is that a lot of the XBOX360 games are being designed with HD in mind. This observation of mine is especially apparent in most of the newer 360 titles (Dead Rising is the first that comes to mind). The text in that game is completely unreadable on non-HD displays. I've played the game on several non-HD TVs and have always had the problem, so it's not a matter of mine just being fuzzy.
In fact, I wonder if any pla
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i know NBC has sports (because I worked on the art for Football Night in America; a cheap ripoff of Hockey Night in Cananda, at first glance), but I know there was some football game I watched where I was like "dude! THAT's a decent HUD!"
oh well. I guess I gotta get an HDTV, now.
I've said it once... (Score:2)
Re:I've said it once... (Score:5, Insightful)
"...gamers who want HD have been using their PCs as their primary platform with a phat 20"+ LCD attached that can do 1680x1050 or more widescreen."
That's an amazing generalization. Being able to run new top-of-line games on a 20"+ LCD doing 1680x1050 costs quite a bit, both in initial investment and constantly chasing the upgrade curve. I never did it - my PC is still too crappy to play Half-Life 2 at anything above 800x600. I am not inclined to sink thousands into such a machine when now a console can do HD for a fraction of the price.
Assuming a console lifetime of 5 years... $600 for consoles plus some accessories.
vs... $4K+ to maintain a system at good game-ability (ability to run all new games at relative high resolution and settings) over 5 years.
One is affordable for me. The other never was.
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I would like you to see you build a machine (sans LCD or input devices, to make it easier for you) that can play FEAR on 1440x900 (sort of kind of HD) at high detail (not ultra, just high), for $600. Hell, FEAR at this point is already a year old and considered last-gen.
And while you're bashing motherboards and crawling around in little aluminum enclosures, I hit the on button on my console, have a blast, and I'm done with zero hassle. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy building a new machine as much as anyone,
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And even you spent more on your Mac laptop than most people would need to do word processing, web browsing, movie watching, downloading, etc. Most console gamers could slip into a $400 eMachines PC and be perfectly comfortable.
The only way in which PC gaming can even possibly be considered
you're way off (Score:2)
Macs are shit for gaming, BTW, since they don't come with highish-end video cards, which run about $300 retail.
So while PC gaming is still definately more expensive... it's not even close to your ridiculous $4k.
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One frame per second doesn't count.
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Meanwhile I'm still portable...
I've been sucked into the desktop replacement thing before, and I'm not inclined to do it again. I've been schooled the hard way that performance and mobility are by and large mutually exclusive qualities, and any solution that promises to deliver both usually gets away half-assing it.
As a college student there are two things I do. I work, and I game. I do not game in class, nor do I game at the library, nor at a coffee shop, nor anywhere that isn't home. A desktop replace
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Are we even talking about the same things here?
"15.4" @ 5 lbs laptop isn't portable? A 7 hour battery isn't long enough?"
Show me a 15.4" laptop that weighs 5lbs that qualifies as a desktop replacement (i.e., plenty of RAM, large HDD, game-capable video card, etc). Please. And then show me one that has a battery that is realistically rated at 7h (real life performance, pulling the number out of your ass doesn't count). I've only seen a handful of laptops in my life that can run >7h on a single charge,
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Just out of curiosity, are we including a legal license for WindowsXP and Virus Protection in that nu
Do gamers really need games? (Score:2)
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Umm, no. That is not the conclusion to draw from the recent history of increasing resolutions -- rather, the conclusion to draw is that video game makers believe that's what gamers want.
Not to digress too far, but the reason I'm more of a console gamer now than a PC gamer is because gaming PCs are too expensive, and most of the newer games require expens
Yes and No (Score:5, Insightful)
Disclaimer: I have an "HDTV" in the form of LCD hooked up to Xbox360.
The whole HDTV argument is kind of moot. The status quo of video gamings certainly do not demand HDTVs, but IMHO that's a limitation that game developers are trying to overcome. For years we've been stuck in the world of ultra-huge text just so it's readable on a crappy tube set. We've been unable to communicate detailed information to the gamer. Think about the resolution as a mode of information bandwidth. The more resolution you have to work with (within limits) means the more data you can pass to the gamer. This is why RTS games work on PCs but not on consoles (beyond the obvious control difficulties) - these games demand that a lot of information (unit health, unit selection, unit status, squads, tactics, waypoints, etc) be visible all at once, which before the HD era has simply not been possible.
The way I see it, the HDTV thing is good. It further reduces the gap between PC and console gaming, allowing game developers to put games that would never have worked on a 480i tube TV on a console. To me this is a lot more than being able to see the tiny glint on a suit of armour - there is more to the HD issue than mere aesthetics.
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While I don't disagree with your point as a whole, I don't think this is the best example. RTS games worked well enough back in the days of 320x240 resolutions (Dune 2, Command & Conquer, Warcraft I). Perha
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I love pushing the resolution on my computer when I'm sitting 2 feet from the monitor so I can see more stuff on the screen at once. But I'm not so sure I want to max out pu
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This is a fine argument for eventually making HD-exclusive games - which would be enabled by pushing the HD standard to where it actually is standard. It doesn't work so well with systems that have to simultaneously deal with 480i and HD, though.
Not so good journalism (Score:3, Informative)
There's always time for zombie smooshing! (Score:2)
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I've always thought the "needs HD" argument was stupid in the first place. Nobody needs HD like nobody needs a faster car or a nicer coloured iPod o
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If the next version of Dynasty Warriors has thousands of dudes on the battlefield at once (I sure hope it does), they're going to look like crap in SD and that's to be expected. Do you truly believe that any game released on a 'h
Maybe I'm missing something? (Score:2)
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Satellite solves the problem of no local HD programming. And are you really sure that your rural area receives no HDTV over the air? Unless you're in the mountains, chances are that you can receive over-the-air signals. HDTV signals travel farther & with much less opportunity for
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This has been my problem as well. The truth is you can probably find any size of HDTV you want but if you are shopping for something inbetween $300 and $4000 you are going to get poor value for your money.
People quote cheap HDTV's but they are usually talking about tiny 17" inch sets that nobody rea
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Note that Congress is mandating a switch to digital television [wikipedia.org], not high-definition television [wikipedia.org]. SDTV can be digital, too.
One of the things I've wondered... (Score:4, Interesting)
If they decided to design a new graphics card that was designed from day one to have the exact same performance as the current one, only at a higher resolution, it could be feasible.
Then, once HD adoption has improved and once the graphics card prices have dropped, they could release an HD Wii that played the old games, only at higher resolution, and the games should mostly work. (A few small patches may be needed, and the odd game may not work at all.) This way, they don't go to market with expensive new features most people can't use until most people can use them; best of both worlds.
Polygon-based 3D game scale up really nicely. You wouldn't get higher-resolution textures magically out of the deal, but just actually rendering the whole HD space, rather than upsampling an SD-sized signal, would look much sharper. You might see a bit more pop-in and it's faintly possible the balance of some games might be broken by being able to see a bit farther, but mostly it ought to work.
Yes, there are technical issues, but I don't think they are insurmountable, and even if there is some set of games that just don't work in HD, you can always just run them in SD mode, which the HDWii would need to support anyhow. (Especially if they completely replace the Wii with the HDWii, instead of maintaining two product lines.) Probably the biggest issue would be if games strongly assume SD resolution with some sort of pointer, although it's still possible that such games would still work, it's just that you'd still only be able to point with SD-pixel resolution, which probably most people wouldn't even notice. (Any game that asks for pixel-perfect pointing almost certainly won't be fun anyhow...)
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Maybe you're forgetting that they've already done this, multiple times: Gameboy -> Gameboy Pocket; Gameboy Advance -> Gameboy Advance SP -> Gameboy Micro; DS -> DS Lite.
I don't think they've done it with a non-handheld yet, but many people that owned an original Gameboy Advance or DS seemed quite willing to buy the newer ones when they came out.
"Need" is a Strong Word (Score:4, Interesting)
For the rest of us, we'll either make do without and enjoy looking like a nutcase swingling an oblong white doohickey around or we'll get 57.352" wide screen dilithium concentrate HD TVs and enjoy killing zombies in glorious resolutions.
Either way I'm stoked.
Who Cares (Score:2)
Note: I just bought an HDTV on Saturday.
I really don't care. I'm glad I can play Dead Rising in HD (as soon as I buy it and a 360). But I don't really care that much. The 'cube looks fine already, and it would actually look BETTER on my new TV because I could run it in progressive scan. Then again I still thing Super Mario World and Yoshi's Island are two of the best looking games ever. I wouldn't care if new games were released that looked just like those. If they were just as fun, I'd be thrilled.
I'm gl
Re: Get the Wii Component Cables.... (Score:2, Insightful)
F-Zero GX is glorious in 16:9 + 480p and it STILL pushes 60 FPS. If you don't have the component cables for the GC, I'd recommend them for the Wii and to replay some of the GC games that support it.
TV viewers will drive HDTV, not gamers (Score:5, Interesting)
We all seem to forget that the primary use for the TV in most households, is to view TV shows. If Joe Bob is going to get an HDTV, it's not because he or his kids want to play video games in HD, but because the whole family has this need: Mom wants to see her prime-time shows in all HD glory, Dad wants to catch his football shows in HD, the kids want to play games in HD, etc.
So, is HD adoption in general growing in the US? It certainly is. Every holiday season, it seems like HDTV is the "big gift" to save up for. If not then, its the tax-return season. Or around the time of the Superbowl (guys want to get a new TV in time for the "big game"). Eventually we'll get to the point where half the country now has some sort of HD TV set. It's anyone's guess how long it will be (I'm betting it won't be for another 5-10 years).
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Stupid question. (Score:2)
I think the question is obvious and pointless. Of course we can live without it, but what we all have in common is that we're paying for what we're getting. Nintendo isn't launching a high-end station and this reflects the price of the console too. So a person who is willing to piss away $500 on a graphics card is also more likely going to need HDTV resolution on a gaming console, while a guy who spends $100 on a GeForce 6600GT can settle for less.
No one really needs anythin
Need? (Score:2)
hdtv (Score:2)
Short answer: No. (Score:3, Insightful)
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HDTV is required for next gen (Score:2)
Next generation gaming can't be complete without HDTV. I think it is smart to fall back to SD for now, and ween people off those terrible SD sets. While I don't advocate shutting out the SD players of the world for numerous reasons, I think HD is the very definition of next generation gaming. As suc
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For you to get your great graphics you have to "ween people off" of SD sets; that is, you want to force me to spend lots of money (I'd bet my TV will be working long after SD broadcasts go dead, and I don't plan on getting a new one un
I think Ninetendo is on the right track (Score:2)
What I see happen is that people will buy a Wii now and a PS3 later. Because the choice is to either throw down 600 bucks for a console now and have a PS3, or lay down 200 now for a Wii, enjoy it for the 2-3 years
Yoshi's Island (Score:2)
Revolutions in graphics can drive innovation (see 2d -> 3d), but HD, while nice, does not change anything.
Graphics are nice, but eventually you stop noticing because youre either having fun playing or you turned it off because it isnt fun.
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Actually the SNES ran at the very crappy resoluton of 256x224! Yoshi's Island still looked awesome though (and IMHO still does).
My two cents - (Score:2)
Do gamers really need games? (Score:2)
But then, I want to play games and I want to play them on an HDTV.
stupid question (Score:2)
Multi-player games (Score:2)
Console Jokes (Score:2, Interesting)
Games on HDTV yes, movies - not so much. (Score:2)
As far as I'm concerned, games DO need HDTV - we look at games far more than we do movies.
When I say look I mean examine the finer detail, need the ability to look at clear, crisp inventory menu's for example.
Need to distinguish between a bad guy in light green with a small yellow * on his uniform or a good guy in dark green with a small red * on his uniform.
Etc, etc etc.
Also sometimes the pictue is sitting still, same scene for a minute or two, a movie however is generally always moving and you a
What the "next generation" really needs (Score:2)
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No. (Score:2)
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Nowadays I'm very happy playing my Atari 2600 on my 36' Wega
Yeah, I want HD (Score:2)
Certain kinds of game need HD. (Score:2)
definitely not (Score:3, Insightful)
There are a lot of people now trying to justify their Xbox360 and future PS3 purchases by telling everyone that we need HD and that HD is the future of gaming. It doesn't make a difference gameplay wise. You're not going to get some life altering experience from playing games at higher resolutions.
We don't need it and it's not what the majority of people have, or will have in the next 5 years. When they can deliver consoles that support HD for a reasonable price to consumers who actually have HDTVs, then obviously things will be different...but for now it's just not worth it for the average consumer.
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See, HDTVs displaying a low-def signal look really, really terrible. Lo-def CRTs actually benefit games because they blur out the jaggies a little bit, and give a very bright responsive image with good contrast. HDTVs are downsampling and displaying non-native, so the pixelation and smearing just looks awful. Also many flaws, like one pixel cracks between geometry pieces which are normally hidden on CRT, stand out l
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HDTV!=Flat Panel
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That said, I think the Wii will be fine at 480p. And until the PS3 comes down in price, that's all I'll have.
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That's what the... (Score:2)