hdtv

Folks who can’t pony up the dough for an HDTV are up in arms over the lack of splitscreen  gameplay in Minecraft. It’s not broken or anything–at least that’s what they say. But SDTV players are entirely locked out of any splitscreen games, the option only available if your console is hooked up to some sort of HD output, Kotaku reports. It’s left some players on the Xbox.com forums completely clueless as to the problem, while others up in arms. It’s something that most reviews, including our own, didn’t catch–so yes, SDTV gamers are few and far between.

We’ve spoken our distaste about this recently, but this goes far beyond not being able to read text. This is locking players out of major features, players who spent money with no warning they’d be locked out. Players who are confused and mad. Take a look at just a few of the complaints below.

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Whine, whine, whine. That’s all my friends do when they come over to my house to game. I hear stuff like “I can’t see anything!” or “I could actually win a match if we were on my TV.” Whatever, I thought. I still kick their trash when we’re playing online, so why would an HDTV matter? (By the way, that’s not my TV) Then I started playing the first Mass Effect. Having conversations with NPCs was nigh impossible. I had to sit just a few feet from the TV, and that’s saying something because I have great vision. The text was just too small. I couldn’t read HUD values, bios, or pretty much any other text, either. Still, I dismissed it and played through.

I’m a tightwad when it comes to money. When you have a wife and two kids, a mortgage, bills, etc. you will be too. My philosophy has been not to replace a TV if it ain’t broken. To my chagrin both of my TVs are stubbornly resilient. I’ve had ‘offers’ from two brothers-in-law and several friends to sabotage a TV just so I can pick up something that’s HD. Still I resist. Why should I spend money on something I don’t need? Or do I?

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