In what comes as a somewhat surprising announcement, The Inquirer is reporting that Nintendo have been keeping secrets from the public about the Wii’s HD potential. As most readers will no doubt be aware, Nintendo have been promoting their ‘gameplay over graphics’ philosophy for the current generation of home consoles, as demonstrated by their Wii-mote controller and supposedly the Wii’s somewhat dated internal hardware (compared to the likes of the PS3 and 360).

However this could all be about to change, Charlie Demerjian of The Enquirer reportedly got into a discussion with a drunken Nintendo executive who proceeded to reveal that the Wii is far more capable than we have been led to believe. Apparently the Wii’s GPU is able to support high definition graphics, although not to quite the same degree as its rivals.

Why haven’t we been told? More importantly why haven’t developers been using the technology? Demerjian elaborates:

“The reason you don't see it is twofold, the fact that the console can't really push HD [resolution] at reasonable frame rates and the fact that it would cost more. The latter will probably become a moot point with the first Wii refresh but the former problem is really here to stay.

What it comes down to is that the Wii may be the best console out there, but don't look for 1920 * 1080 games pushing full [resolution]. If anything, SD or maybe widescreen upscaled is about all you will see, but for me, I just want HDMI outs.”

An interesting rumor for sure, but one that seems somewhat unlikely in the grand scheme of things. Nintendo have not yet responded to the accusations so take this with a large pinch of salt for now and we’ll let you know if anything comes of this in future.