Nano Assault Neo and Trine 2 Director's Cut aren't $100m games. They're both lower budget than ZombiU, but look better.

Besides, why should a game get a free pass for being lower budget? I thought we were talking about graphics, not cost-to-graphics ratio.

ZombiU does look much better than Resistance though; Wii U's games from its first 6 months obliterate the PS3 and 360's first 6 months of games graphically.

Well, I thought it was common knowledge by now. WiiU is certainly capable of far more than PS360. Devs just have to make an effort, because copy/paste-jobs from PS360 don't work. Meanwhile, PS4 and XB1 will be capable of far more than WiiU. Anybody denying any of this is just ignorant.

Different type of games and approaches, racers and those smaller titles have a lot more free resources to play around then a FPS not to mention in Trine's case a lot of the visuals come down to art direction then technical feats, a more accurate comparison is to look at COD as the above games won't be taxing the U's resources as much as what a FPS would. If we look at FPS games present at console launches (PDZ, Resistance, Condemned) as well you notice some work has gone into ZombiU despite it's short development, as a launch game it's actually a good effort.

The "extra taxing" workload of an FPS game primarily comes down to AI, animation, physics, and setpieces. ZombiU isn't really pushing much in any of these areas. It's not taxing the system. It's just the result of a rushed schedule, laziness on the part of the devs, or both. The game shown above look better simply because their developers put actual effort into making them look good.

I would love it if this were true. If it is i hope to see it being put to practice and see what they can bring to the table.

Fact is a FPS still requires use of those areas the games you listed don't need to as much if at all so the developers were freed up to focus on other areas the's also the fact that ZombiU is a ground up game while two of the listed are ports which are easier to handle as the game is already built, ZombiU is most likely pushing the hardware more then those games you listed as a result.

And what exactly about ZombiU is pushing the system? Textures, lighting, shaders, AI, animation, modelling, physics, none of it is particularly complex stuff. Being built from the ground up doesn't mean it was built well from the ground up, or built with any attempt to push the system. The team probably figured it didn't need to look cutting edge to get the job done, and therefore didn't bother investing the resources to push Wii U's chipset.

Here's a simple way to put it to you, lets take two games Muramasa and Red Steel 2, the former may be more visually appealing but the latter requires the system do more so the hardware works harder in running the latter then the former. Read things in context as well the point is ZombiU pushes the hardware more then what those games do as a result of more being needed to run a FPS then those games not that it fully pushes the hardware, the's a reason racing games are consistently good graphically then other genres hence why they're often used as showcases for consoles. If I want a good idea of performance I'll look at more complex type of games that require more and being a launc title made in 7 months ZombiU is actually not bad considering how launch games that aren't ports go.

ZombiU doesn't do anything to make the system work hard though. It doesn't do more than games like Need for Speed, it just does different things. Sure, it does character rigging (badly) and the like which NFS doesn't, but that's actually less technically demanding than a lot of what NFS does. (Open streaming world, more advanced shaders, etc)

If you want an apples to apples comparison, a good example would be Black Ops II, also on Wii U, also an FPS. It does better animation than ZombiU, better character models, better shaders, more complex AI, more happening at once. And if a subpar port is outperforming ZombiU, that's not a sign it's making good use of the system.

Nintendo consoles always gets great 1st party games, its just a matter of time.

And cloud computing will never be as good as having more power in the actual box.

I agree that sony will have the most powerful console this gen and will push graphics the most.