Then the converse is true as well -- lower resolution implies longer draw distances. Ego, Wii games have the longest draw distance of this generation.

Do you see the problem with the logic here? Rendering engines aren't that simple. If you're not running into a bottleneck, you don't have to make a tradeoff. Chances are, the bottleneck they ran into here was with the framebuffer so it is very unlikely that they were trading resolution for draw distances.

As you no doubt know (since it's common knowledge), the 360 has a built in hardware scaler and scales the rendered resolution to targets as selected by the user.  Two of those targets are 1920x1080.  It says little about the native resolution of the game and I think the beyond forums have pretty solid evidence as to the resolution being rendered.

 Is not a fair comparison and you know that...

Of course I know that. I'm making a point by showing a fallacy. If we can say 'higher resolution implies lower draw distances' then we can also say 'lower resolution implies higher draw distances' by logic. This is clearly not true, it's not true across consoles, but even more relevantly it's not true across the 360. Of course, it may be part of a tradeoff (as I've stated several times before), but, then again, it may not. You may be decreasing or increasing the resolution irrespective to draw distance and you may or may not even be limited by fillrate. Your draw distance could be restricted by your CPU time available, for example.

Higher resolution does not imply lower draw distances. It doesn't. While you may be able to tradeoff draw distances and resolution in some situations, it does not apply to all situations and that is exactly my point.

And my point is that this particular situation is much more likely due to framebuffer size limitations than fillrate.

 You're twisting words. The comment is about lower resolution on the same system. Learn how a framebuffer works. It has to manage the fouth wall of the game. More graphics can use it up. Yet esolution can also use it up, since some of the tasks of the frame buffer require watching every pixel on screen at all times.* Ergo, more resolution means more pixels to watch, and more of the framebuffer is eaten up. Less resolution means there is more room in the framebuffer to deal with a greater amount of graphics.

 *The most well known of these tasks if anti-aliasing, but there is also one that sees what textures are on screen, and what isn't visible is not fully rendered, which saves bandwidth. This is expecially important in a game with a free camera, which any FPS has by defintion (or else it would be a rail shooter).

Sony and Nintendo have always paraded their consoles HD capability, its a pity to see that MS's killer app runs at 640P.

No no no no.  You could have a 10x10 pixel texture wrapped around a 3d object and that object can still be rendered at whatever resolution you'd like.  Texture size has nothing to do with the rendered resolution.  The amount of textures and the size of the textures (also read as quality of the texture) could be affect by the space on the medium.  Also, the performance could be affected if the amount and speed of onboard memory is insuffecient for the amount and size of textures being used.  But the size of the medium has absolutely nothing to do with the resolution of 3d games.

DVD upscaling on the other hand is different story.  There you are working with a flat 2d image that already has a prerendered resolution.  Each frame is a prerendered picture (which is what an individual texture in a 3d game is).

What sieanr said about the lighting engine makes the most sense so far.

I'm assuming this is meant to read "Sony and Microsoft".  If someone had to get a screen grab and manually count pixels, than it is a moot point.  Most people thought the graphics of the campaign were above par.  And until now, no one noticed.  Does it matter on paper?  Yes.  Does it matter in application?  Obviously not.

I reckon that caring wether or not a game is "Next Gen HD" means you really don't care about the game itself. 

Microsoft's system is buggy and the the graphics and HD of many games are questionable.

Sony's system is too expensive, unapealing and developers can't seem to develop for it properly.

Maybe HD wasn't the best choice for this generation since no one really seems to know how to do it right.