We're seeing more better-looking games in the pipe for 2009. The Conduit, Sonic Black Knight, Monster Hunter 3 Tri, Fragile, Deadly Creatures. All excellent, but still not quite at that sheer level of technological achievement that can put arguments to rest

But we have to remember that certain high-end Xbox games ran in HD, something that the Wii isn't capable of, whether because the GPU can't handle the fillrate, or simply because it's a built-in limit that couldn't be surpassed without significant homebrew tweaking (which defeats the purpose), there's going to be that disadvantage

@Rajendra: I used square for the reason it forms developement budget. We'd have a box if we'd include advertizing and funny shaped objects if we'd cut "complexity" into different segments.

You may have asked the wrong question, about why Wii isn't getting games with short campains and high graphics, it's more like why PS360 are getting the games. In the same way the devs/publishers think that Wii owners don't care about graphics, they think that's the only thing that matters for HD console owners (notice how everyone gets shafted), when too much of the budget is targeted to the graphics. Of course, Wii will be getting those games too, now Conduit as an example (i'd recall it was kind of short), but since there's not much competition, it will propably pay off.

As for the games with relatively lower cost in graphics and higher in the complexity side, like NMH or the PS2 ports, they never were supposed to sell in big numbers. NMH has its artstyle, where you can have "bigger production value graphics" for cheaper, just like SMG has cartoony artstyle, whics saves a lot in costs. Ultimately, it's better to have more gameplay with lesser graphics, if the gameplay is good.

@Vagabond: Actually, since you mentioned Wiis tech, you can find what it's designed for from the power consumption level. Keep in mind that Wii and 360 pretty much share the same tech, with the difference that in 360 the tech is used to squeeze high performance out of it, while Wiis focus for the tech is to be efficient.
So, what you may want to say, is that the debate isn't about tech, but performance.

We didn't see the DS topping the 5th gen regularly until two or three years later as well.

You always think that the Wii being 2 times as powerful as the Cube assures it 2 times more performance ...but thats wrong.

First the Wii displays graphics at 480p ....that requires a lot more processing power to display pretty much the same graphics but in progressive scan.It must also control the wiimotes and related software etc .And you need big improvements in performance to see big differences in screen.

Unfortunately ,the Wii being 2 times stronger that the Cube is not enough to show significant changes in graphics .

Look at it this way ,for the Xbox360 to show significant changes over the Xbox 1 it is nearly 15 times as powerful ...and the Xbox 1 was more powerful that the Cube to start with.And if we go to the PS3 we go for an astonishing 8 3200mhz processors against a single 295mhz one ...sure the SPUs arent as complete as a full CPU more like specialized units but we could say that it is at least 35 times as powerful .Twice just isnt enough to see diferences .

So it somehow takes twice the processing power to display a Wii game in 480p than it took to display a Gamecube game in 480p? Your thoughts are interesting, can I subscribe to your newsletter?

Mostly I am in agreement with Diomedes1976 here, except that I'll point out, before opposing arguers do, that, actually, most GC games also ran at 480p.  The only real difference is that the Wii tends to have titles that render in anamorphic widescreen (wide pixels), whereas the GameCube did not have many such titles (Starfox Adventures is about the only one I can even think of).  In any case, anamorphic widescreen is the same number of pixels, so... The Wii does have 1.7x the clockrate of the GC's GPU... but... that doesn't really translate to anything more than a slightly better fill and vertex processing rate.  Its better, but, as dismedes1976 states above, its not the landslide needed to jump generations.

Unfortunately, we don't know much about the Hollywood processor except that it is twice the size of the Flipper processor (if the flipper received a die-size reduction using a 90nm process) and it runs at 1.5 times the clock speed of the Flipper processor ... We can speculate about what changes Nintendo made to their GPU, but I think the safe bet is they made modifications to improve performance of some sort.

Now, being that the Wii is more powerful than the Gamecube and the Gamecube was more powerful than the PS2, Wii games that do not achieve similar performance to good looking PS2 games can be blamed entirely on developers who haven't tried to push the Wii's hardware; unfortunately, this represents the bulk of third party games. Ultimately, when you look at the best looking PS2 and Gamecube games and consider the enhancements that are possible because of the additional capabilities of the Wii there is nothing saying the Wii can't have some very nice looking games.

Yes ,very nice looking ....for a PS2 or something slighty above .

Look ,the Saturn was about 16 times more powerful that the Megadrive,could put on screen like 1000 times more colour on screen and added like 15 times more storage power .The N64 was like 50 times more powerful that the Snes in processing power,added like 8 times the storage space (uncompressed ,compressed a lot more ) and had a whole new generation of graphics processing and graphic filters .The PS2 was like 16 times more powerful that the PS1 (at least 10 times if you add the SP1 vertex processor )in proccesing power  and had 8 times the memory and 15 times the storage capacity .The Cube was not  so a big step over the N64 but it was still  at least 5-6 times more powerful,had 8 times the memory  and had tons more storage capacity .The PS3 and the 360 are 40 and 15 times more powerful than their predeccesors .....multiplying by two the memory ,GPU and CPU doesnt provide you enough jump to see really different things .I agree that each and every Wii game sub-PS2 or sub-Cube is entirely to blame the developers ,but that doesnt mean the Wii streched to its limits will make us see something really different from a very good looking Cube or Xbox 1 game .

As for the resolution ,judging by the reviews of Okami and other games I was under the impression the old gen games werent really 480p but 576i or something like that ...if I am wrong I stand corrected .

I must say, I do find it interesting that a person as obsessed with the performance of a system as you're would waste your time with a system as underpowered as the PS3 ... After all, you can go out and buy a system that is well over 10 times as powerful.

Because for some people, graphical superiority only becomes important when you feel you have it.