IndustryGamers had the pleasure of attending a special roundtable event in New York City today where Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto talked a little about Wii Fit Plus and then New Super Mario Bros. Wii (with a full gameplay demonstration). In the lengthy Q&A session that followed, we decided to ask the Nintendo icon about his feelings towards high definition graphics. After all, Nintendo passed on HD in favor of standard definition and a motion control scheme. That said, analyst Michael Pachter seems convinced that a "Wii HD" or "Wii Plus" will be introduced next year.
While Miyamoto of course wasn't about to shed any light on potential new hardware, he did indeed hint that Nintendo would follow the progression of technology. With HDTVs far more common now in the U.S. and Japan than they were three years ago at the Wii launch, Nintendo's probably looking a lot more closely at HD graphics now (if not for Wii HD, then at least for the true Wii console successor, whenever that launches).
"I don't think there's anything wrong with pretty graphics, and if I'm a consumer that has an HDTV, I'd want to be able to play my games with nice graphics too. And I think as we've seen the penetration rates for HDTV increase, we're going to see video games and Nintendo's games move along in step with the progression of technology," said Miyamoto.
He added, "But what I don't think is necessarily true is that the graphics itself is something that's going to make the gameplay experience better. So we're still going to focus on the gameplay, but we'll take advantage of the technology as it comes out."
