Something that was obvious to everyone when looking at first generation XBox 360 games was that to move up to "HD Graphics" you couldn't just increase the output resolution; this was (essentially) what people tried with games like Gun and King Kong and the XBox 360 version of these games looked worse than the XBox version because the higher resolution demonstrated the flaws in the textures and all of the polygonalization artifacts. To make a game to have a similar "quality" at 720p as it does at 480p you have to increase the resolution of the textures, and use more detailed models; all game engines still  perform a large portion of clipping, culling and all of the polygonal animation on the CPU which have a workload proportional to the number of polygons displayed.

Basically ... For the Wii to display graphics at a similar quality in 720p that it produces at 480p it would require far more than the GPU clock speed increase and memory increase (for the screen buffer) to increase the output resolution; it is difficult to say how much more is needed because soon after the graphical artifacts begin to be reduced (for example pixelation of textures is reduced) the overall image quality is improved because of the increased resolution.

It's actually the Wii version.

It's posted with the IGN review of the game with the caption "not so hot".

damn!! the first one is like real!!! the 2nd one is like ps1..... :P

 and yes, you are so true, for god's sake, Crusin is the best looking wii game, not even need to say, by just posting the picture everyone understands the quality of that game!!!

There could still be a difference from that picture and ingame. Maybe I will look in to it. But it's still just an updated N64 game, if I don't understand it wrong.

well Wii sports didn't look that hot either so maybe some third parties thought that was the standard =)

Balls of Fury (Wii):

Gran Turismo 5 (PS3):

I've tried to be as fair as possible and they're fairly close, but I think the Wii is slightly ahead in this comparison. The shaders in Randy's hair, for example, are stunning when seen up close, while the graphical power of the cell in the Gran Turismo screenshot is not enough to render hair. Therefore Polyphony took the design decision of making everyone wear helmets.

Then at least they should have learned to make better textures than most GameCube games has. Grass, wood...

hm......i don't know if it's mentioned before but......
i wonder what you have to say about this:
http://media.video.ign.com/ev/ev.html?dlURL=http://wiimovies.ign.com/wii/video/article/867/867522/hightechwii_flvhigh.flv&object_ID=14248157

Well actually he can.

He likes the way GoW 2 looks and that game is 90% art direction. Ther was also a lot that game pushed technically but too him it seems that is the best looking game last gen...Despite it having low rez textures tricky fades from the background, obviously Level of Detail and repeated texture (that were arranged cleverly) and lower poly count.

Do not get me wrong GoW 2 is one of the best looking games last gen but it had least to do with the technical aspects.

But yeah many people think that WoW is the better looking game out of EQ2, Vanguard, LoTR.

Do I think a straight port from the 360 or PS3 is possible no I don't but I do agree that the Wii is much more powerful than anything last gen.