Engines are nothing like a skin... Think of it as all illustrators, graphic designers, and photo retouchers using Photoshop to create their work... It doesn't mean that the results will be anywhere near the same.

Take a look at just a few games created using the U3 Engine.

Aliens — (2009) Gearbox Software
• America's Army 3.0 — (2007) US Army
• APB — (2008) Webzen
• Black Powder Red Earth - (2007) Echelon Studios
• Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway — (2007) Gearbox Software[33]
• BioShock - (2007) Irrational Games
• BlackSite: Area 51 — (2007) Midway Austin
• Elveon — (2007) 10tacle Studios[34]
• Fatal Inertia — (2007) Koei[35]
• Frontlines: Fuel of War — (2008) Kaos Studios
• Gears of War — (2006) Epic Games
• Halo Wars — (TBA) Ensemble Studios
• Huxley — (2007) Webzen Games[36]
• The Last Remnant — (2008) Square Enix
• Lineage III — (TBA) NCsoft[37]
• Lost Odyssey — (2007) Mistwalker[38]
• Mass Effect — (2007) BioWare[39]
• Medal of Honor: Airborne — (2007) Electronic Arts[40]
• Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia — (2007) Artificial Studios[41]
• RoboBlitz — (2006) Naked Sky Entertainment[42]
• Rogue Warrior: Black Razor - (2007) Bethesda Softworks
• Stargate Worlds — (2007) Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment[43]
• Stranglehold — (2007) Midway Chicago[44]
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas — (2006) Ubisoft
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction - (2007) Ubisoft
• Too Human — (2007) Silicon Knights[45]
• Turok — (2007) Propaganda Games
• Unreal Tournament 3 — (2007) Epic Games
• Upcoming Mortal Kombat Game — (Unknown) Midway Games
• The Wheelman — (2007) Midway Games
• HEI$T — (2007) InXile Entertainment
• Condemned 2: Bloodshot — (2008) Sega

 Are you being sarcastic?

And damn it I left out casual at the end, it was supposed to casual and Nintendo games not Nintendo games exclusively before ppl start listing me the 3rd party games of the Wii. 

Well yeah, Gears of War 2 was cheaper because A) They already made Gears of War, so they had all their stuff together in the beginning, B) PS2 development kits came out 7 years ago, as opposed to 1 year ago, C) Red Steel was probably more rushed for the holiday season, so they had to pay more overtime, or whatever.

Uhm, IIRC the Wii also supports the Havok engine, it was stated some time ago.

The primary reason I posted this was in the end, the hardware companies, regardless, could be doing far more developing their own middleware suites to lure 3rd parties in to make games better suited for their products. Imagine this: Nintendo makes the ultimate middleware suite. It's complete with every texture, every rendering product, voice activation sofware, Wiimote intergration, online compatability software, physics engines, ect, ect ect, all optimized for the Nintendo Wii. In all honesty, how much do you think between Steam, Havok, UE3, and the other major engines, the producers of these suites have spent on their solutions? I doubt that any one company has put over $30m into their suites. However, the hardware manufacturers, knowing even better than the devs do about their own machines, could easily plop $100m into their own "Nintendo Engine" or "Xbox Engine" or "Playstation Engine", and enable developers to drastically reduce costs by 50%, or more. This is expecially needed when the next-generation comes out (PS4, X720, Wii2, ect), as costs will still increase, even if Nintendo only used a system with a single-core 3.2ghz. However, each of the big companies could easily cut the next-gen fees, or even reduce them from previous generations via uber-middleware suites. So even from a financial standpoint, it'd make far more sence, because the primary advantage of making a game cheaper is merely by taking less time to develop the game, as 75% of your game-making costs are from actually paying the salary/hourly programmers, artists, coders, testers, ect to build the game. Therefore, if you could make..........A Final Fantasy-type game that sells 5,000,000 copies worldwide, but instead of making it in 3 years, you make it in 1 and 1/2. It sells the same. Not only did you cut your costs by 50%, incurring far more profit, but more importantly, you have a year and a half extra time with your developers to spend more time on other games. Even Epic themselves said that games cost too much, thus why they encourage middleware. If games started going back down to $1-10m for a strong title, the 3rd parties wouldn't have to port every game to every system, and we see the major companies trying to compete again in the marketplace of software incentives, and the games become cheaper. Remember, due to the price of developing games, as consumers, we still pay $50 to $70 for a game. Against inflation, we pay slightly less, but in most other market mediums (such as movies), prices have come down with top-rate DVDs being $20, and many being $15 at launch (VHS were $100 in the early 80s).

No sarcasm here, I liked your post and I can see that's where the market may look to be going... I don't want the 'epic' games on Wii cause I want more graphics and stuff that the Wii can't do in them :)

But if the Wii has a sheit load of fun pick up and play games then that will suit me as well, because I like both :)  (i'm still playing Tetris DS) 

I don't think game prices are likely to come done even if costs plummet, the companies know that gamers have accepted the $50 (and now $60 blech) price point and won't have any motivation to drop the price. They'll just make more games. Which I think is definitely a mistake, just look at how well all the $20 Touch Generations DS games have been doing. It definitely seems strange that the console makers aren't doing more to develop console-specific middleware engines themselves. It'd net them more exclusives and more profit by licensing out the engine. You know Nintendo at least makes their own engines for their systems, maybe they're still thinking like they're competing as a software company and want to maintain that edge over other games or something. It's bizarre.

I agree that the harware companies could and should make some big engines for their systems, not only could they make some money out of it by licensing it, they could also reduce their development costs/times by using that engine, and by making third party games cheaper, encourage more developers to work on that system, and more people to buy it becuase of the cheaper games. Remember what happened with the N64 because the third party games were too expensive? Also, I'm sorry but your analogy about the price of oil/petrol/diesel didn't exactly make much sense, becuase oil cannot/should not be made any cheaper because it is a finite resource, and in America it is still cheap anyway, it's about £1 a litre here in the UK, and about €1.10/l in Europe (I think, probably wrong)

My whole point of the oil comparison is that everyone complains (in the US), and wants a cheap, quick fix rather than take a good look at why it's so expensive (refinery capacity, taxation, no alternatives, gas guzzling US SUVs, ect). Many people in the US complain, but do nothing to cut back, or get the govt. to do anything about it, but that's ot. Anyways, here's a big question: Suppose Halo 3 was launching, like it does. However, Microsoft announces that since it was so cheap to make due to using UE3 (I can't even think if it is), that it was going to retail for $29.99. Where would sales go for the game? The system? Microsoft's future? IMO, as stated, I think 1/2 the reason Touch Generation titles do so well is they are CHEAP. They are cheap to make, and Nintendo passes along the discount to the consumers - and the consumers have responded in-kind to make the games sell so well. Would Brain Training do well at $100 a copy? Probably not.

The biggest problem with this generation of gaming is the mind set that it is required for graphics to sky rocket between generations. Development costs are getting higher because of technology plateauing not inflation or economic strife. If you need to boost the standard console cost from $200-$300 to $400-$600, literally doubling the standard of console price, then are those graphics still technically next-gen?