Wii Want High-Def (How About You?)

Wouldn't it be nice if you could play Zelda: Twilight Princess in glorious 720 or 1080p instead of a blurry, jaggy 480? How about Metroid Prime 3? Super Mario Galaxy? Kitty Luv?

Okay, skip Kitty Luv. Or don't and mark your calendar. (Who names these things?) In any case, no one can really deny the fact that the Wii looks best when you're poised a half dozen feet away and paying as little attention to the visual trimmings as possible. Unless you're squinting or half-blind, close inspection of any Wii game reveals a lot of blah compared to the crisp organic fantasy-scapes in a game like Overlord (Xbox 360) or what I've seen so far of Factor 5's eye-boggling Lair (Playstation 3).

So how about a high-res version of the Wii?

I tease because I love, but seriously: Always provocative Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter suggests Wii-to-the-power-of-2 could in fact be zipping our way as early as 2009.

"Consumers may hope for improved graphics, and my guess is that Nintendo will comply," said Pachter in an email to GamePro.

"In two or three years, commodity prices for graphics processors and CPUs may decline to the point that a High Definition Wii could be introduced. If so, Nintendo will likely introduce one," he added.

Fans though we are, GamePro's not wrong to finger the contention dogging Nintendo's wunder-console that consumers will flock to better looking A-list games when the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 finally spit out more than an annual handful. What's more, the worldwide market for HDTV is expected to grow to nearly 148 million households over the next four years, spurred by demand for flat-screen TVs, sports-driven content, higher availability of HD content, and more competitive pricing for HD services. Consumers are going to want something that shows off their newest $1000-plus toy.

My own caveats about the value of an Xbox 360 or PS3 in terms of total ownership expenses only hold up so long, as each of us gradually pieces together Dolby 5.1 systems with high grade digital receivers, studio-quality speakers, and finger-thin organic light-emitting diode screen living room centerpieces. A high-definition Wii might make perfect sense in two years, when the HD market's not as dodgy and dithering between Blu-ray and HD DVD standards.

Imagine: A backward compatible Wii2 that enhances older Wii games (just as compatible Xbox games look twice as sharp on the Xbox 360), plays some form of high-def media, and can compete tolerably well CPU/GPU-wise with the Xbox 360 and PS3. I sometimes wonder if Nintendo, with its habit of introducing new Gameboy iterations every couple years, might not have the better philosophy by in essence giving us more of less.

Could it be another manifestation of the so-called "long tail" effect?