Speaking at an investor conference, Nintendo chief Satoru Iwata made a case for less-than-HD games. He says that the company has plans to play on its own turf instead of competing in Microsoft and Sony's.
"As we will showcase the Wii U at E3 in June this year, the detailed announcements must wait until then, but we are aiming to make a system which shall not be forced into competing with the others where the contenders can fight only with massive developer resources and long development times as their weapons," he said.
"Looking at the software for home console systems, there are certainly the software titles for which very rich graphics must be reproduced on HD displays and which demand a large number of developers to spend a very long time to develop.
"It is one of the truths that a certain number of such software titles must be prepared, or the consumers will not be satisfied. But we do not think that any and all the software must be created in that fashion.
"When you look at Nintendo’s software, extraordinary rich graphics, massive gameplay volume and astonishing rendition effects are not necessarily the appealing point. It is, in fact, important for us that our games are appealing in other ways as well."
He cited a few games, including Rhythm Thief, as an example of games that do not need to offer HD graphics to be appealing to gamers.
"If we had adopted rich photo-realistic graphics, it would have lost much of its appeal," he said.
Despite his comments on budget titles, Iwata reiterated the need to develop big budget, HD titles. "As I mentioned, it is true that, in some software areas, we need to be engaged in the power games.
"Take The Legend of Zelda franchise, for example, the fans must be looking for the graphic representations that they do not see as cheap at all when the title is released for the Wii U. When it is necessary, we do not hesitate to role out our resources."
Source: Gamingbolt
