We're survivors, Alex. We manage to play the games without being able to tell what the icons are in the tutorial portions of games.

Sure, they could spend less time working on show builds and devote some guy's afternoon to having some sort of algorithm so that the text and icons are 50% larger if you check a SDTV box in the options screen.

While this all seems practical, imagine the response from gamers if the text was bigger and ugly on super expensive TVs. "they aren't even hd setup, get with the times"

In a way, its not so much the dev's fault as it is the consumers. The HD and now 3D hype is fueled by the excitement of the masses. Look at the madness surrounding 3D Killzone 3. Never mind that you're required to wear uncomfortable glasses that disorient sight, the community at large are creaming their pants from holographic tricks that do nothing to change the fundamental gameplay.

There're even fucktards out there whining that the Wii lacks HD support, and from the way they express their dismay you'd think the SDTV never existed. Although I own a HDTV, but I truly empathize with your situation. Your friend is a victim of hype, not inadequacy.

Unfortunately, I'm in the SD only camp. Being a high school student, I don't really have the ability to purchase a quality HDTV. My family has two HDTVs, one in our living room and another in a den, but I play all of my games in my bedroom. One horrible SD experience I've had is with GTA 4's cell phone. I could never make out what any of the messages or names were, so I had to scoot up close and squirt really hard. It's rough being an SD guy.

@Eugene - The "masses"? Really? Have you ever really just walked into a bank or in the park and just ran up oen random people just glowing religously about HD the same way the "masses" clamour on about Lady Gaga, Jersey Shore or American Idol? Or have you been consuming a load tech geek media and assume this is that the "masses" demand the same way a lot of people in subcultures and assume the "masses" think and want the same things they want because they're all sipping the same Kool-Aid not venturing far out of their own group.

I'll grant that 3D hype is there, mostly off it actually working very well in big-budget movies developed for it. That said, even within the group of people I talk to that are regular movie goers, they aren't exactly going giddy with excitement over everything 3D nor wishing everything was in 3D. I keep myself in the company of sports fans, very few people I know have or seem that excited over ESPN doing 3D broadcasts. Heck, I more than an insignificant number of the people I know didn't exactly rush out to grab TV's that caught digital signals until that became a government enforced standard. And a lot of the ones I knew with SD TV that had cable and where unaffected at the time, remained in no rush. From obeservation with people around and me and taking in what media I take in on a daily basis (which includes nearly every major American newspaper as it's going to press), I'm not sure the "masses" are hyping anything.

Tech geeks on the other hand, absolutely are. Most of that hype is coming from tech media, which tends to droll over every "next" new toy anyway. They're generally the ones at the forefront of pushing companies forward on these projects and are oft the only one's (well aside from the population that buys anything new for the sake of the status of saying they have something new) willing to finance the sometimes faulty and always more expensive first run of something while the "masses" actually sit back and wait on a verdict on how good that stuff actually is. And as that tech improves and becomes more cost-effective so the price comes down, then the masses hops on-board.

So to Alex's question, no. The game-industry is moving at the pace tech companies always do. Sony pulled this already with Blu-Ray in the PS3 already this generation. To a degree, they may have to. It doesn't exactly seem a sector of an economy that can sit back on one tech and wait for the next to hit 75%-100% penetration before moving forward. It suck for some because they will get left behind. I was that kid growing up and remain in that boat in many ways now.  But then again, these are luxury items and this is very much a luxury hobby. This is one the many unfortunate results of that reality.

I don't see much of an issue, honestly -- if you're really hurting for cash, you can buy a 22" HDTV for less than the cost of a Wii these days.

HD has been around since the '90s, too. I don't think nearly 20 years later that developers are moving too fast with the technology. Forgo a few games and upgrade! It's worth it (and it'll free up a ton of space in your room, too).

@Rob - Why do you think the Wii is so successful? As video games expand their user base, they're moving into groups of people that are less likely to adapt to new tech as quickly as the stereotypical 20 something with an expendable income. The Wii takes this into account and is perfectly playable on SDTVs, which isn't that hard to take into account, really.

Imagine you're a tween kid with no money, but all of Microsoft's push for the casual worked and your mom buys a 360 for your household. So you pop in a game and quickly realize it is borderline unplayable on your SDTV.

Sure, the industry can't afford to wait around until the adoption rate is almost 100%, I get that. But I don't understand why it is so difficult for them to just increase the text size slightly so that SD people don't have to stick their noses to the screen.

Eh, I don't think the Wii's SD limitations are nearly as important regarding its sales than the fact that it's always been the cheapest game console option and that Nintendo aggressively marketed it towards families.

I think it comes down to development costs -- adding in SD text size might not be worth the extra money and time. But this is also endemic of consoles, which aren't exactly known for providing players with user interface options.

If it's continually a problem, buy games on PC. You can scale the resolution to anything your monitor supports, and two of the games mentioned (Saboteur and Lost Planet) are on PC. I think Dead Rising 2 will also be on PC.

Screw the SD/HD debate - what about the Surround Sound debate?! I still don't have surround sound! Wah!!!

Some games are really bad for this. Others, not so much. 

Are you sure, Lance? Nearly all of my PS3 games support surround sound....

This truly isn't just an SD vs HDTV issue. For people who have a vision disability, giving something like a choice of text size could break a major barrier to them being able to game more effectively. I had a customer who was a regular gamer, who's sight was so bad that he had to hold the box almost all the way up to his face to see, yet he still fought through to plat the games he loved. He could see better from further away, but I can only imagine how much having a choice of larger text could improve his life.

I really don't see how this could add that much cost to development, and with expansions of things like ADA, I think the day that this type of accomodation will be required one day.

Beyond just helping people who are visually impaired, this could also benefit all gamers. My TV in my bedroom is about twice the distance away from the TV than how I nornally sit. Text in games like Red Dead Revolver is often hard to read because of this. I would benefit from this type of design as well.

This industry really needs to learn to be more inclusive if it wants to keep expanding!

Great post, Alex!

@Lance Surround-sound solution: Get your wife to stand behind you and hum the score and go "BANG! BANG!"

@Frank I wonder if someone could sue a game developer via the ADA for not having text large enough for the visually impaired to read. Not like you can bump it up....

Frank, it's more involved than just changing the text size -- in some cases, the entire interface may need to be redesigned for lower resolution displays, and the developer may not have the resources to build two distinct interfaces.

@Rob - Yeah, I know they do. I am just the last guy in the universe who doesn't have surround sound... although the method Jason suggested is one that I can afford! lol

@Rob Just make the text bigger and its associated interfaces bigger in the first place. Even on my fancy plasma and my glasses on, text can be hard to read. I had this issue with Red Dead Redemption. I found myself squinting. 

I haven't played Red Dead, but I haven't had problems with other games on my PS3 with a 1080p setup. I also wear glasses (for distance) to see the screen.

Making the interface bigger to begin with might work, but it's a balancing act. People complain all the time when too much screen real estate is taken up by the interface.

This is an interesting article, Alex. I completely understand where you're coming from. I played HD games on a SD set for some time before finally upgrading. Team Fortress 2's menu was completely different looking once I upgraded to HD, and, like you mentioned, Dead Rising's text was unreadable.

Hopefully you've hooked up that HD set you got, because it makes a world of difference.

Hehe, lazy? Alex, you've got an HDTV you haven't bothered to plug in! =)

I have to say I'm with Rob here. We're nearly 5 years into the 360's life-cycle, and HDTV prices have dropped dramatically in that time. I recently picked up a 26-inch monitor with 2-HDMI inputs and component too (enough for all current-gen systems) for 200 bucks, and that wasn't even the cheapest product on the market. If you decide put the money into an HD system, you should definitely invest in an HDTV.

@Brett Consumerism! Bah! Why should someone buy a HDTV if they have a standard-def unit that they like? It just creates more electronic junk and toxic material to clean up. I was fortunate to find a good home for my SDTV when I got my first HDTV. 

@Jason: It's not consumerism -- the image-quality improvement is massive! I don't want any standard-def TV anymore; can't stand the fuzziness.

Technology changes -- it'd be like a PC user with a 8-year-old PC complaining he can't play the latest games. Sometimes you have to upgrade!

I think Alex is right, but I don't necessarily argue from a consumer advocacy standpoint. With 50 percent of the U.S. behind the HD curve, it behooves Sony and Microsoft to make their products as apealing to SD users as possible. If that includes a simple fix like including a second HUD option that makes text bigger then they should force developers to do it. It's no different than including multiple control schemes for different controller preferences or a gamma correction slider if the game is too dark on your TV. SD users aren't asking game companies to have a completely separate graphical mode.

To me, the question isn't whether or not these display options should be included. They unequivocally should be. The question is why the hell aren't they? There must be some good reason why developers and console manufacturers don't want to include them. My theory is that forcing customers to upgrade to HD helps these companies out more in the long view.

I agree that option for text size should be given to the HUB menu just like different control scheme, subtitles, or lefty mode.  I think developer are just being lazy to design a different HUB layout for their games in SD, maybe they fear bigger text would ruin some of their game's aesthetic.  (Graphic Design field always prefer smaller text = prettier graphic layout)

There was a time when I was sympathetic to this plea. I spent $650 on my first HDTV in 2006 for my PS3, and knew that most people wouldn't be able to afford such an outlay. I'm having a harder and harder time justifying this view now though. 

$70 will get you a component to VGA converter to use your computer monitor as a 720p HDTV. $130 will get you a 20 inch computer monitor with HDMI and HDCP at 720p. $140 will get you a 16 inch actual HDTV with HDMI inputs. If you've purchased a $200-300 Xbox360, and continue to buy $60 games, it's hard to say that you can't afford one of these options... I'm sure that you can find someone getting rid of an old monitor or tv that has hdmi even cheaper if you can't afford $130.

But it's not just an SDTV/HDTV question, either. I'm gaming on a HDTV, and the interfaces are just too damn small. I don't want to squint to be able to read menus in a game. We didn't have this problem in the previous generation.

I can understand why it happens - all the guys in our studio are developing on their own dev/testkits, with small HDTVs sitting 2 feet away from their face. Of course you can read pretty much anything at that distance. But when sitting at living room distances, perhaps 6-8 feet away, it's a different story.

I think it's just lazy to make everything so damn small. You could most often just put less information on the sreen to make it fit, or design it better to begin with.

I suppose that's my problem then. I play on a 26 inch computer monitor at a distance of 3-4 feet. I never have any problems with menu sizes. I don't know how game playing is still something done in the living room. Usually the main living room TV is tied up with other things in my experience.

I question how much effort it really takes to create two different sized/structured interfaces after the Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts n Bolts fiasco.  Initially, the text and interface in that game was nigh unplayable on SDTV's, until Rare promptly released a patch to fix the issue.  A quick patch is all it took?  It can't be [i]that[/i] difficult then to cater to both TV definitions during the development cycle.

Alex...you kick ass. I don't tell people that...ever. I don't know if you get that a lot, but you really kick a lot of ass. This piece cements that.

@Brett - There are other factors besides laziness behind why I haven't hooked up that HDTV, but I'd rather not get into them.

@Everyone whose response is prices on some sort of HD setup - So, this generation hasn't moved forward because the industry thinks that people couldn't afford a new system already and probably wouldn't buy it, but you think surprising them with the fact that the system they decided to take the plunge on is going to need a TV that is just as expensive as what they just spent is a good idea?

The game industry is expanding, and that means that some of those 150 million HD-less people might be finally willing to take the plunge on something other than a Wii. Imagine when they get it home and plug it in to find that they can't read anything on the screen. Now tell them they need to go buy a $200, or more, HD set. They'll probably be more likely to return their new PS3 or 360 and get a Wii than they will to rush out and drop another wad of cash just trying to get their new system to be playable.

@Isaiah - Thanks. I don't get that a lot, but it is enjoyable.

But Alex, not many people go into an electronics store to buy an HDTV [i]just[/i] for gaming. Television is still the number one pastime in the United States. I'll wager that a significant plurality of adopters do so for HD broadcasting/cable or watching Blu-ray discs. Considering the wide variety of applications for an HDTV, its cost is much more easily justified than you suggest.

@Rob - Right, but it isn't necessary that they upgrade to watch TV, so 50% of the population hasn't. I'm sitting here in my chair, watching TV on an SD set with my father-in-law. They haven't even thought about upgrading, because they don't really think there is any reason for them too. So, imagine a family with some young kids who've been begging for a PS3 or 360, and the parents finally caved. Now the kids come up to them and say they can't read anything on the screen and can barely play the game. Either those kids have to get used to squinting, or the parents have to drop another wad of hundreds to get an HD set.

As well as that, the adoption rate of 50% is for households with ONE HDTV. How many families have one TV nowadays? How many kids gather around the living room (where the one HDTV would most likely be) and play their video games while the parents watch or simply relinquish control of the TV to the kids? The more likely situation is that those kids are refined to a den or their bedrooms to squint into an SD set.

Oh god, Burnout Paradise and even worse, [Prototype] are damn near impossible to read.  Red text in a fancy serif font over a brown theme?  I have to sit a foot away from my 19" flat SDTV (one of those that has the flat screen but is the same size as an old tube TV and weights about 3 times as much)

But yes.  They should make an option for improving text size.  The 360 gives an option on whether it is playing on an SDTV or HDTV, so just associate the text with there.  Force a 16 font instead of that 12.  Or at least keep it from narrowing the text.  I'd gladly take a slightly more obscured screen over having to sit on my coffee table to read the screen.

As to the cost of an HDTV, I'll say that I have thought far more of upgrading than my parents, this being one of the primary issues.  One of the reasons I haven't is that I've heard a lot of older systems look like crap on an HDTV, and I sitll have all mine hooked up.  Anyway, Regardless of being able to afford it or not, my family keeps a TV till it breaks beyond use.  Our current main TV is a 60" digital projection SDTV.  The connection to cable is broken, so we're running it through our VCR to get the signal.  Its been this way for a good three years.  Even if it upgrades, my 360 is still in my room, so it wouldn't help me.

So yeah.  Pay a guy that 10-20 hours to make bigger text.