Four reasons why Nintendo should use a resolution of 960x540 for the Wii U Controller's screen (though it's probably too late to make this change assuming the console is still due out in 2012).
As a foreword, I just want to say that I think Nintendo should mandate that every Wii U title be rendered natively at a resolution of 1920x1080 at a rock solid 30 fps, with 60 fps for the racing and fighting genres. That would do a lot to win core gamers over, and the system is powerful enough to mandate this. Given this stipulation...
At E3, it was revealed that the Wii U controller demo units at e3 had a screen resolution of 854x480. I just wanted to share with you my input on why I think a resolution of 960x540, frequently referred to as a qHD resolution would be vastly preferable for the Wii U controller.
1. A full 1080p game like Rayman Origins streamed onto a qHD screen would look absolutely gorgeous. There are no compression or scaling artifacts when going from a resolution of 1080p to qHD. Unfortunately, if you had to scale instead to a resolution of 854x480, there will be compression and scaling artifacts apparent, which hurts the image quality. In addition, it would actually use more system resources to scale down to that resolution since the ratio is off. On the other hand, the resource use to scale an 1080p image to a qHD resolution would be very minimal..
2. One of the most sought after and frequently used functions of the Wii U will be to stream netflix movies, game trailers and other videos directly onto the controller even when the tv is being used by someone else. Much of that content is already at resolutions of 1080p or at worst 720p and videos at a 1080p resolutions will be even more common place by 2012 and 2013. From my experience with video conversion, processing and scaling, I can tell you that converting a HD resolution to a resolution of 960x540 (qHD) scales far better, uses less processing power, and results in stunningly beautiful results.This is because when you are going from a resolution of 1080p to qHD, you are scaling down exactly by a factor of four. Every four pixels can be combined down to one pixel and the results end up looking impeccable. The results when scaling from a 1080p or 720p video down to a resolution of 854x480 actually requires more processing resources and still doesn't look anywhere near as nice.
3. Given the size of the screen, and the distance the typical person will be holding from their face, pixel density absolutely does matter. At a resolution of 854x480 on a 6.2 inch screen, you end up with a pixel density of close to 150. At that value, you will definitely be able to see pixelation of the images on the controller and it won't look quite as nice. However, at a qHD resolution, the pixel density becomes closer to 200, which is optimal. Not only will be pixels be difficult to notice and pixellation minimal, but you could easily display text on the controller's screen and have it look crisp and very readible. I know that there are currently no plans to stream ebooks from the console down to the controller (though I see no reason to close the door on this entirely), I am certain that even for the purpose of games, like Scribblenauts for the Wii U, being able to display on the screen will be useful.
4. I expect that one of the most valuable features of the Wii U's controller is in Split-screen Multiplayer. While assymetric multiplayer is nice, traditional multiplatform games like Call of Duty will largely offer up traditional split-screen multiplayer where the splits a 1080p screen into four identical rectangle on the tv to display for each of up to four players. While this is fine if the players are playing with Wiimotes and nunchucks, if the players are instead playing with a Wii U controller, each of the four player's windows could be streamed perfectly, with zero scaling and very minimal processing needed to a qHD screen. However, if the screen had to scale down to lower resolution for the controller, this eats up more processing resources which are especially important during local multiplayer gaming (a resource intensive task already).
These are also the reason why I'm very happy that Sony made the correct decision to make the Vita qHD (resolution of 960x540) and excited to use the Vita as a controller for the PS4.
