Totally agree, factor 5 made amazing efforts on Nintendo systems.

They also should have purchased out rare (or at least the IPs) that would have solved the software drought. Killer Instinct, Perfect Dark, Banjo and some classif franchises rhat could have been revived.

Amen.

@others. If Nintendo fans get upset at people acting as such, they're in the right because that kind of denial logic is not right and people shouldn't use it.

Conduit may not have had very good art, but the Wii Sonic games (Colours, Black Knight, Sceret Rings)  had both good art and tech from a third party. Same goes for Shin'en's games, Jett Rocket and FAST Racing League.

I too would love to see a third party push the  Wii U as hard as Halo 4 and TLOU pushed 360/PS3, and it is frustrating that neither Nintendo nor third parties seem to have the inclination to do so at present, but it's stil early days; later in its lifespan Wii U might get more third party partnerships like Bayo 2 that might push the system.

I wonder if Wii was ever actually 'maxed out'. I don't remember any developer claiming to have pushed it to it's full potential graphically. Anyone know of such a game/claim?

But I must say how it's amazing that after 8 years developers seem to still be able to squeeze more out of PS3/360 than ever before.

Bold: It wasn't.Factor 5 had some shortcuts and exploits to the  GC/Wii hardware that nobody else ever came up with, and they never made a Wii game.

Italic: That's what happens when you have pretty much every major game maker on the planet spending billions of  cumulative dollars to optimising for a certain architecture over 8/9 years and hundreds of games worth of experience. The amount of resources committed to milking PS360 dry of every drop of power they can give is unprecendented in gaming history.

Despite the "no duh" aspect of this thread, I expect the Wii U will be unique this generation because it actually might get close to maxed out. I think the PS4 and X1 are hardware overkill and an HDTV won't be able to display everything the system can render. My gut says the Wii U will see a fair bit of system optimization, but the PS4 and X1 won't. Like, ever.

I wonder how good the graphics can get on the Wii U.

It'll be fine. The "rebirth" has begun with Pikmin will continue with Wonderful 101, Windwaker HD, DK Tropical Freeze, Mario 3D world, and then next year with Mario Kart, X, Bayonetta, and whatever else we get.