misteromar mk4 said: The law of diminishing return, just because the 360/ps3 may be 4 times more powerful dont mean the games look 4 times better.

GT5p looks over 10x better then even the best wii game.  The same can be said for Gears, UT3, uncharted, or any other game made on the PS3/360.  Thats not just a quick cash-in.

@Griffin , GT5p is multiple times better than the best Wii games in terms of graphics , but how good would 10X look ? very hard to measure IMO.

That's why I want to know the theoretical gap rather than what we currently see in games , that'll give us a clear idea.

Again if anyone with the technical know how has any idea , please feel free to inform us all.

NeoRatt said: Call of Duty 5 is supposed to ship on the Wii... Maybe then, we will finally get a multiplatform game that uses all of the power of 360 and PS3 to compare to the Wii... To date, I haven't seen any games that are multiplatform, actually try and use the extra power in 360 and PS3. I wouldn't doubt the Wii is often the lead platform in multi-platform games because if the Wii can do it the other two systems won't have a problem at all.

 The next Star Wars game should do the trick too.

Kill Zone 2 and Gears of War 2 should set the next benchmark in graphics.

if you want real developers to give you some real answers with out breaking their NDA's then their is no better place than this website: http://forum.beyond3d.com/

Just register and ask the same question you have here but on those forums, and if you then wish to post it here, then go ahead and inform those that belive the wii is capable of producing the same graphics as the PS3/360 although at a lower rez.

Now I'm not advertising the website, just informing the OP of where he can attain the info he seeks.

If I look at almost photorealistic games like Gran Turismo, ancient Jerusalem in Assassin's Creed, the jungle in Uncharted or some of the war scenes in Call of Duty I think 4 times is a bit conservative. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and quantifying it with numbers like 4times is a bit stupid, so let's just say that Wii developers cannot by far use so many polygons, detailled textures and advanced shaders as 360/PS3 developers. This hurts more in some games as in others.

It didn't hurt them in Super Mario Galaxy which has by far simpler and smaller level design etc. than for example Ratchet but it still looks pretty amazing. On the other hand Wii developers will not be able to recreate huge realistic cities even barely comparable to Assassin's Creed or complicated jungle environments as in Uncharted. They could of course but it would look awful.

how can people say "10x better than _____" is there some sort of rating scale i've missed? Anyway.

remember its not just graphics that make the ps3 and 360 more powerfull. its the ability to run such powerful game engines. this is where the processing power is used. the number of objects in a game engine that all have there own physics. some people are acting as if there hasen't already been multiplatform games across all 3 consoles. the difference is obviouse to thoes who own all 3 consoles or atleast had some extended play of them.
the ceiling on the current systems are very different from one another in power and capability. and the Wii's ceiling is the lowest but it makes up for it with full motion controls. the ps3 has a quarter of the ability of the wii in the motion control capibilites, while the 360 has nothing on it.
As far as sonic unleashed its stupid to think that the Wii is a LEAD platform Im pretty sure its gunna be a Wii has its own devlopment while PS3 /360 has there own. much like the Cod4 delopment that Infinity Ward had.

Reviewers do not review Wii games against the PS3/360 games that would be a really unfair comparison. The reviewers often say game X looks great for a Wii game. Different expectations are set for the three consoles and they should be judged based on what is already available on that console.

ph4nt said: how can people say "10x better than _____" is there some sort of rating scale i've missed? Anyway.

Yes, the scale is called the Arbitrary scale and is used by people in an attempt to prove a point that they can not prove.

One of the main problems with these arguments is people like Squilliam take unconfirmed rumored specs about the Wii, assume they're correct and assume that Nintendo made no improvements beyond increasing the clockspeed; when you look at the confirmed specs (like die size comparison between the Gekko/Flipper and Broadway/Hollywood processors) it becomes clear that this assumption is false.

On top of this, people look at games which run at 30fps and are rendered at a resolution below 720p and claim that these games are representative of the PS3/XBox 360 while only considering Wii games which run at a steady 60fps at 480p as being representative of Wii games; if you reversed this bias and only considered Wii games that ran at 30fps, and PS3/XBox 360 games which ran at 60fps at full 720p the "massive" advantage the PS3 and XBox 360 have would look much smaller.

I'm not saying the Wii is in the same league as the PS3 and XBox 360, but the claim that is made by many (typically Sony) fanboys that the Wii is only slightly more powerful than the PS2 is false; anyone who is being reasonable will probably agree that the Wii is far closer to the midpoint between the PS2 and the PS3 than it is to either console.