Apple can brag all they want but the fact remains that every single benchmark for over a decade showed that the fastest Intel processors were faster than the fastest Apple processors.  Except for some video editing and photoshop applications.  I'll give you that.

Anyway I never said I believed the Xbox was more powerful than the Wii.  The Xbox didn't blow away the last generation so if the Wii is only slightly (1.5 to 2 is slightly to me) better than it's not much of an improvement.   All reports thus far point to the fact that the CPU and GPU on the Wii are modified gamecube stuff, so it's not much better.  

I think we basically agree on the power here.  My point is that it's nowhere near PS3 or 360 and the Wii is much closer to last-gen than any previous console generation.  No matter how you argue the architecure and special features, the Wii has low specs. 

You are absolutly right but you're missing something so important how can something so close to the last gen outsell the real two next gen ? . Well I think it's not too late to admit that the Big N realy knows what videogames universe mean !! look at me I'm algerian and I can see it the Wii developers are genius that's the evidence even with the IBM Cell processor, HD DVD, BLUE RAY and the FULL HD.. the Big N is still alive.

Nintendo forever.

The problem with people talking about games "looking good" is one of disconnect from reality.

Outside of that Spiderman 3 Wii version game someone put up in some other thread there ARE no "bad looking games" anymore. In the 5th gen you had some games that weren't the best-looking or best-playing (usually cheap market tie-ins). But in the 6th gen even Mario Party 4 though one of the first of the system looked good. Luigi's Mansion looked good being 1st editions of Gamecube. It was clear distinct and had personality. They got better with the scanning lines in later titles and made the color strips look more seamless.

I talked about PS2, the weakest of the 6th gen systems, looking wonderful to me while visiting a friend's house playing Tekken 5. It reminds me of Howard Stern and how he and those jackoffs judge the women on there for not having a absolute perfect 45 degree angle on this body part and such. "Oops that's 45.2 degree. Not good enough." Delusional standards is what I'm getting at. Graphic power won't REALLY matter like it has in the past until virtual reality is achieved. Until gamelife is nearly inseparable from real life will it have the same true wow factor as in the past. Which is probably not a good thing if you think about it blurring these lines. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within showed the folly in trying to match realism pound for pound. Actually the closer you get to realism the more you notice the errors. Until they get the eyes looking "alive" it all falls apart. Too perfect. Too shiny. Too idealized. It bombed at the box-office because it was a "fake realism" ironically and that move sent Square reeling having to merge with Enix. The same argument goes for many and breast implants. LOL!

Graphics have a long way to go before trying to attempt second reality so the graphics lust needs to be kept in check egowise. They are games and they can be stylized depictions of realism. Keyword: stylized. Artistic license to make abstract or less abstract illustrations of reality. Art. Even the paintings of Michelangelo LOOK like painted depictions of people not actual people. Even the most realistic drawing artists miss elements of full reality as close to realism as their depictions come. They still look like stylized depictions not the actual thing. Photography comes the closest to artistically reproducing reality but even this has its limits. And many times the picture is touched up to work out the less than desireable features.

Graphics matter, yes, but unless the developer is a lazy "arse" you won't find any REALLY "bad" graphics anymore. This ain't Atari & ET for goodness sake.

John Lucas

you DO realise that the CELL you are so raving about is just a POWER core with a vew vector processors tacked on? how come CELL is so good when it's in the PS3 but not good when it's in the Wii/Gamecube?

The honest truth is that POWER architecture overpowered the old Pentium Architecture (which was getting incredibly outdated before Core came out).

No one is saying that the Wii is powerful, but it is by far more powerful than the Xbox/GC/PS2 

somone said there is no chance the wii could ever do 720p. However didnt the original xbox have 720p capabilities. So shouldn't the wii in theroy be able to do it. Granted the shading and lighting won't be anywer ein the league of ps2/xbox360 but surely it can look decent enough at 720p

and are a very decent graphics, it is the example that a resident evil 5 in the wii (with graphic tricks)wiil not be impossible is capcom decides port it.

How many of you that complain that the 360/PS3 only look good on HDTVs actually OWN one of those systems and an HDTV? I OWN a 360. I have since launch. Does an HDTV make Gears of great? Abso-friggin-lutely. Does it look better than any Wii game, Xbox game, or any other game on SDTV? Yes, by far. You do not need an HDTV to get great graphics off of a 360. More importantly than the power aspects are the gaming aspects. You couldn't do Oblivion's graphics on Wii. But more importantly, the Radiant AI would be scaled back so severely that the game would lose the coolest aspects of it. Everyone that whines and says "oh the 360 and PS3 are just graphics whores" are the people that haven't actually got into the depths of a good 360 or PS3 game. Have you ever played Gears of War on Co-Op on insane? It's one of the funnest gaming experiences I've ever had, just like that many of you like Wii Sports as one of the greatest gaming experiences. What about Multi-Player? There aren't 8m people paying $3 a month for WoW because of the graphics, they are playing it because its one of the funnest multi-player games made. The advantage with the 360, and to a lesser extent the PS3 is that they are truely "next gen" when it comes to online applications. The Wii has no remote advantage for online abilities outside of VC and hokey gaming channels. How many games for the Wii, up till now can you play against people online? As of May of last year, the 360 had CoD2, all of the EA Sports games, PGR 3, DOA4, GRAW, FNR3, Full Auto, and a few others that were online-capible. And that didn't include the games that had atleast something for online. Nintendo fans try to make this race one dimensional: power vs. gameplay control. It's just not that simple. Yes, that might of been the excuse 10 years ago with the PS1 vs. Saturn or the Genesis vs. SNES, but it's not that simple. Why am I a 360 gamer? RPGs. I get more of them than the Wii and PS3 combined this year (if not the next 2 years). Once I get broadband, I'll be experiencing the best online features the console community has ever seen (can you download an expansion pack for a game on the Wii?). There are things that everyone keeps forgetting, but as a 360 owner I know what my 360 offers me. Its not a Wiimote, and its not just a bunch of power. It's the Marketplace, it's the Arcade, it's 100 player battles on Huxley, it's an extra downloadable Uber-Dungeon on Blue Dragon, it's Shivering Isles for Oblivion, it's more people on screen with more actions and reactions. And thats why I like my 360. If you want to be impressed by the Wiimote, feel free. But I strive for more than just controls in a gaming console.

IGN had a story that a Nintendo official did tell them that the Wii could handle 720p but since it doesn't look good (essentially similar but worse to the drop off seen in the 360 or PS3 at 1080p) Nintendo is keeping it from being used.  Sort of like how the SNES could output up to 512x448 but it was only used for text screens at that level, actual gameplay was usually done at 256x224 or how the N64 could do 500k polys/s instead of 100k but it noticeably dropped overall quality so it was also blocked.  If I wasn't about to run off to a statistics quiz I'd find it now but I intend to later.

@mrstickball

Calm down man, no one is insulting your 360 or HDTV.  I don't recall anyone saying the PS3 or 360 doesn't look good on HDTV's (they may have but I'm not rereading the comments and it didn't stand out to me).  Try to keep on subject which is whether the Wii is more powerful than the original Xbox not the Xbox 360.  Anyone who argues that is insane to begin with so just take a deep breath and ignore it.

@mrstickball: I hear you. I plan to go Wii60 after the first price drop to experience the games that the 360 has to offer, HDTV or not. I know the Wii just isn't going to get a lot of games like the ones you've mentioned. It is going to get its own share of awesome games, that are completely different. That's what I love about the Wii, it offers something different at an affordable price. Diversity in the marketplace = everybody wins. I think what people are saying is that a 360/PS3 game has to run acceptably at 720p to be releaseable. A Wii game does not, therefore the Wii doesn't need as much horsepower in the GPU. I know fillrate isn't the only thing that matters, but when you have fewer pixels to fill, you can also get away with using fewer polygons, since you start getting to the point where a polygon only takes up a few pixels anyway. Anyway, chill out. :) Don't concern yourself with fanboys; remember, they're just jealous of what the 360 has to offer. :)

Actually, the initial poster (to whom I was responding to) said "Gears of War could be done on Wii (gaphically), but just not in HD" - That is an outright lie, because as I stated, GOW looks fantastic on SD, and far better than any Wii game I have seen thus far. That was my point. Now, as for the Wii and Xbox debate graphically, it's just a matter of time to see, but the obvious advantage is to the Wii. Not entirely because of the archatecture (which is better), but the fact that the Wii is just like a hyped up gamecube in terms of archatecture. Every dev comment I've seen has basically stated that they could take their GC games and port them to Wii by just adding extra textures. This allows for devs to make better looking games much quicker. The issue of "which is better graphically, and process wise" is difficult, because for the Xbox, we only had 4 years of dev time for most major games before they were cut off. The Wii has a bit extra time due to the archatecture being so close to the GC, it allows for extra efficency from the get-go. Not that the Wii has been tapped out by any means, but it's rate of efficency as of now is probably a higher % than what the Xbox was before it died....Who knows. However, Fable and Forza Motorsports were pretty great graphically, and would be the only 2 games really available for comparison to Wii games.