Wii never maxed out?

[freebs2]

You can't really compare Rouge Leader with Mario Galaxy, it's apples vs oranges.
On Gamecube both Metroid Prime and Resident Evil 4 don't have bump mapping, but on the other hand they have a more complex geometry imo.
Jungle Beat, made by the former galaxy team, is one of the best looking Gamecube games, it has a great graphic design and excellent animations.
Wii probably was almost maxed out, it's just that Wii's best games are made to look quite good even on today's lcd TVs, while Gamecube games were made to look good on smaller, interlaced, cathodic TVs.
Resident Evil 4 is a very good example imo, if you play it on an old TV it's almost perfect, play it on a 32" lcd, and it wll turn into a scalesfest. On the other hand I've tried Galaxy on 50" lcd and it still looks good, despite low def.
Also lighting and shadows effects on Wii are clearly superior (just look at galaxy) and I don't know how much they are demanding on hardware.