still a day one buy ;D

I can't tell if some of you are being sarcastic or if this is actually the difference between buying and not buying for some people... The game still looks great and, more importantly, if this has done anything for gameplay it's improved it via the framerate.

I can hardly recall a game that looked as good at release as it did in trailers a year prior.

Several Nintendo games this gen and last noticeably improved visually as they approached release; Mario 3D World and Metroid Prime 3, for example.

I was just being silly, but I do also agree that this isn't in the same category as those releases. The only JRPGs that come close to AAA fame/infamy is the console Final Fantasy titles.

That said, Xenoblade is certainly not cheap to develop. It's going to be at least a quarter of AC I think.

Ah, my bad, I am bad at detecting non-seriousness. ;)

XCX is quite possibly the most expensive game Nintendo has made to date, but I doubt it comes remotely close to what the big Western blockbusters cost.

I don't think any dev or publisher out there would be willing to pump a AAA budget into this kind of game, as they'd know they wouldn't make their money back.

while the lighting has taken a hit, I still think it looks alright. But some of the textures are downright ugly. Not sure if this is due to loading as the timespan they're shown is rather big.

The floor is shown from 0:02 to 0:09, that's within the realm of a texture streaming delay.

We then switch to the shoulder angle, with similarly low res textures, which then pop into high resolution at 0:11.

Been over two years: I'm pretty sure things were put in and others taken out in that time.

Just make the gameplay good. I own a Wii U, I obviously don't care about visuals. Give me good gameplay.

I think it has to do with compromise. If you look at the city scene it all looks like last-gen graphics but else where it looks like Wii U. I think the real limitation is the disc size which is not big enough for the resolutions.

XCX runs at 720p, not 1080p. Not only has all the footage we've seen been 720p (some trailers have a 1080p option but that doesn't do anything other than clear some of the compression), but Nintendo themselves have said it will be 720p :p

As for "No other game has beaten it to date" (in regards to scenery), i assume you mean artistically? On a graphical level The Witcher 3 has that prize pretty firmly locked down right now.