Following the recent Netflix on Wii announcement, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime was asked by CNBC if the next move for Nintendo is to add HD to its Wii console. The Netflix news is all well and good for Nintendo, but the Wii cannot play the HD movies that Netflix offers. Reggie doesn't think that matters.
"The vast majority of content that's available for streaming through Netflix is not HD content. So there really is no loss for the Wii consumer, the fact that they can't get any HD content through our system," Fils-Aime insisted. "But even more importantly than that, the consumer has voted. Over 26 million consumers have bought a Wii, so the consumer is saying that for them the quality of the visual is not nearly as important as the overall entertainment, the overall value of that experience. That's really what's propelled us."
Reggie added, "In terms of what the future holds, we've gone on record to say that the next step for Nintendo in home consoles will not be to simply make it HD, but to add more and more capability, and we'll do that when we've totally tapped out all of the experiences for the existing Wii. And we're nowhere near doing that yet. There's lots of ongoing opportunity for the consumer in the current generation with the Wii console."
These sentiments echo another interview in which Reggie said that the Wii has a "very long life in front of it."
