"Dead Rising is an evidence of over confidence in an engine that was just "scaled up" to be able to handle that kind of game. Many of the features were not optimized properly and that is because of the lack of time and budget for the port to be made. You cannot just "add" a feature without reviewing the full engine and game code. It's an iterative process that just couldn't be made for Chop Till you Drop because of time and budget restrictions. RE4 Wii edition is a polished GC version with the PS2 extras. There was no new features, just improvements."
1. You are wrong about lack of budget. Capcom has said the budget was almost as high as an original game of that scale (some of you don't agree with the results, but that does prove it was not a cheap cash-in), so money had nothing to do with it.
2. You are wrong about time as well. The development was well underway when the game was first announced, and it was even delayed two months. And don't tell me that was not enough. Capcom has also stated that re-releases do take less time because they have a final result, where original games take a hell of a lot more planning.
3. What the hell do you mean by features not optimized? The gameplay worked. Do you mean some of the effects? I'll give that, but that's also due to the fact that they were trying to squeeze assets from a massive game onto the Wii, and no one had done something like that before. It was lack of experience with remaking HD games on the Wii that affected the development more than time and money.
The PS2 port of RE4 gets praised, but what they forget is that Capcom knew both the GC and PS2 inside and out by then. That is not the case with either the HD systems (most of their big stuff is promised for games that are coming out later) or the Wii.
3. And "optimized" or not, the scale is still larger than RE4 could ever pull off. Note that any area in that game tends to get more sparse the larger it is, while the sparse areas in Chop Till You Drop were more due to consistency in the design with the first game. Other areas were loaded with objects in the background. Compare the houses in the village area with the shops in any one of the plazas. I should know. I've played RE4 loads of times, and the areas are beautiful, but the best detail is reserved for smaller areas, while CTYD still has loads of different shops in areas that dwarf half the areas in RE4.
You state you work for a software company, but you still seem to be making assumptions on these games, rather than deductions and research (I outright asked Capcom about some of those things). And if you've every worked on porting a program, or rewriting it for less powerful systems, you should know all the things that can affect the quality.
