My roommate logs a good 12 plus hours a day with his Xbox 360 on a dusty old 32″ Sony Trintron in standard definition.  Scoff!!  I would never do that to myself but there are plenty of fools that do.  Up until now, Microsoft has had the stringent policy of requiring all games to have a minimum resolution of 1280×720 (720p).

That was a good thing right?  In my eyes and I’m sure many others, yes.  I went out and bought a HD TV specifically for my Xbox 360.  According to Black Rock Studio’s David Jefferies, this is a good thing because “now we are free to make the trade-off between resolution and image quality as we see fit.”  I don’t really understand that sentence.  What I make of this is that while I have yet to see any related statistics is that most households still do not have HDTV so that is why Microsoft has dropped the requirement.  What I ask is, does it matter for the gamer who is playing in SD?

In any case, Halo 3 was the only game where the requirement was waived and know I no longer have to wonder why I thought that game didn’t look all that great in places.  I really hope that developers don’t pander to this resolution free-for-all as the Xbox 360 in my esteemed opinion, was always meant to be played in HD.

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