14 DAY TRIAL // With Project Natal confirmed as being real and coming in late 2010 and with Sony officially stating that it intends to release the motion tracking add on for the PlayStation 3 at some point during the spring of next year, the biggest hardware-related rumor in the videogames industry is that Nintendo is secretly working on creating a Wii HD home gaming console, which will retain the same motion-powered abilities as its predecessor while introducing High Definition graphics on par with the offerings of the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3.
But it seems that simply upgrading to HD is not something Nintendo is interested in doing. Regie Fils-Aime, who is the president of Nintendo of America, has told Kotaku that an HD Wii is “not the way we at Nintendo do things. The way we at Nintendo do things is, you know, when we will move to a new generation, it's because there are some fundamental things the console cannot do.”
Fils-Aime has not mentioned what new features he would like to see Nintendo introduce in its new console but apparently a graphical power upgrade is not something appealing to the manufacturer and publisher.
The Nintendo boss has also said that he is disappointed in videogame developers focusing on graphical capabilities when they decide the platforms on which to release their titles. He believes that “we've shown that that's just not the case. High-quality, effectively marketed against our installed base will sell, period - end of story.”
It seems that, for the time being, Nintendo is content to let both Sony and Microsoft try to catch up with its motion tracking capabilities and will only make an announcement about the future of the Wii at some point during next year, probably at one of the bigger trade shows.