I was trying to program the Wii to do that just as a test but the existing homebrew SDK absolutely doesn't allow it... I'm guessing I'd have to dig a lot deeper with low-level code to do it if it's even possible (the video chip might not allow it).

To illustrate my earlier point: 

Show me some xbox screenshots that have better looking environments than that. Then we'll have a fair comparison. 

 Wow, thats sweet man. Can you port Resident Evil 5 for capcom once youre succeed? :)

 Nintendo is the one you have to talk to about that. The console is locked out of anything above 480p I believe. You would have better luck getting blood out of a stone than getting Nintendo to change an arbitrary limit.

Why is it that SMG always has people linking screenshots that were captured with terrible capture techniques and look nothing like the game?

Even decent quality captures look far better:

Where as other shots from the same website were obviously captured incorrectly as we see below with much of the image's colors being crushed to black due to the capture technique:

Moral of the Story: Not all screenshots are created equal.  Cherrypicking shots can achieve just about any conclusion you would like to reach.

You're right Wii gamers are interested in good graphics, the problem is most Wii owners aren't gamers. The average Wii owner is less interested in technical achievement than the average gamer on any previous console, and developers know this. There's an incentive problem with the Wii that encourages lazy developing and cutting corners, which is utterly fascinating for an economist such as myself but rather frustrating for those owning a Wii who have been gaming for a long time. It's a shame to some extent but it's unlikely to change in the near term.

A) The Gamecube and Xbox had games that were on par.
B) The Wii is much more powerful than the Gamecube.
C) Draw your own conclusion

If you can't handle that, then here is Julian Eggebrecht from Factor 5 to bring the knowledge.

- On publishers not taking advantage of the Wii’s power for graphics: “the traditional, more photorealistic route, because there you really have to push it, and they’re really not pushing it. Why not? Hmmm I don’t know, the hardware is very, very easy to understand. Now the problem might be –and it just might be- is that some studios -or some publishers specifically- are discarding the graphical capabilities automatically simply because it is a Wii title and they’re basically telling the developers “look, we won’t pay for any advanced graphics”.”

- On Wii’s “shaders” and possibilities: “If you connect you can get a lot of shader effects which would’ve been on the 360 or the PS3.” (…)”it’s got so much more power compared to the GameCube. If even with the extremely similar shader hardware, the system clockrate is so much higher, you can do so much more advanced things” (…)”in the photorealistic route there’re certain things which the basic structure of the graphics hardware was not meant for and which you have to find really clever tricks to basically make up.

Source

5. Resident Evil 4 was a beautiful GCN title. Rogue Squadron was doing things at launch that developers still haven't done on Wii. Why do you think that is? Are studios getting sloppy on Wii? 

Julian: Yes. I'm so disappointed knowing exactly what the Wii can do -- and I still think nobody knows it better than we (no pun intended) [laughs]. I really have to say, boy, am I disappointed! They all have finally figured out, five years into the hardware's life cycle, how to do at least basic shaders and a rim light, but that's what everybody does. But I still don't see enough bump and normal-mapping, if any. I still don't see enough post effects, although you would have insane fill-rates with Wii. I don't see any of that. I was digging out Rebel Strike the other day and was looking at it, and we had some people who were visiting ask, "Why isn't anybody else doing this on Wii?" And I am at a loss. I really am.

Source

The_vagabond7 said: Better?

 SMG looks nothing like that, either you have seen it and are trying create a false impression or you have never seen the game. Because if you had seen the game you would know it looks much better than those pics.

I think one other problem not yet mentioned is that Nintendo themselves only push the graphics in certain cases. Galaxy, Brawl and Prime 3 all got the extra oomph of effort, but Nintendo has more games developed by them that don't look any different or much better than a lot of the other offerings on the Wii. It doesn't help that the top selling titles on the Wii by Nintendo are some of the weakest graphically...in a technical sense. I don't mean in art direction.

Oh yeah, it's one of these again.

There's one problem with screenshots, if i'm not mistaken, the best looking XB games were in 720p, which means that you can have pretty screenshots, but there's low framerate in motion (dropping below 15 FPS usually starts to annoy people), while Wii focuses more on having higher framerate, but less resolution (propably the reason why resolutions above 480p aren't available).

As for 3rd parties not pushing the hardware; since Wii isn't capable of anything like PS360, they see very little incentive in doing so. Basically this is due them for not to understand the market.

@NJ5: If the game wasn't available in 720 on XB, maybe presskits for 360? Or upscaled with PC to have better pics?

@Picko: I wouldn't be so sure about it. You think that the average Wii owner isn't as interested in graphics as the average owner of any previous console, but the fact is, that outside from the group that usually are early adopters, nobody buys the console for its technical capabilities, they buy it for games. Most of the people upgrade when there is no longer games that intrest them coming for their console and the titles have moved to the next gen systems.
Though, i do agree that it's a shame devs rarely try to push the hardware or even try to match the GC graphics.