@Bolded Um, so all this time it wasn't because the Wii isn't powerful enough to run these games without notable downgrades like many say, but because it doesn't have programmable shaders? 

Oh please go ahead and explain these numbers you are giving us. 2x? Where did that come from. Oh and may I note that you are the one who mentioned that the Wii and GC *could* do what the Xbox does, but they need to use more power to do it. I said that there is more power to use, which means that it is quite possible to do the same things if we go by *your* logic, unless I am interpreting things wrong.

Hey I got news for you, the things you described are considered more "high end" on the Wii than they ever were on the original Xbox. The games you mentioned are not the rule, they are the exception and people can't seem to stop using those as examples. Like they are the ultimate achievement for the Wii or something. Riddick, Doom 3 and Half-life 2 are  more impressive than the Conduit, and so is Halo 2 when you consider the environmnets, vehicles and physics. 2 of those games are PC ports that weren't tailor made specifically for Xbox. Viper didn't post any specifiic specs, he just said it has more pipelines and he has no evidence as you yourself said that those specs haven't been released.

@Pearljam:

Off Topic: Did you know that the developers of Sacred 2 ported Direct3d (X) to the PS3?

Yes the Wii can do all the effects that the Xbox can, I never said it couldn't. It takes more power because they are not built into the hardware like they are with Xbox.

GC would get PS2 ports because it can't handle an Xbox game with all the effects you seem to think it can pull off with no effort. If they included all the effects it could do, framerate and geometry would be affected. This is what I mean by it taking more power to do the same effects, the best example being the Splinter Cell games. Yes GC could do those effects but not in a game like Spinter Cell, at least not as well as the Xbox could.

Wii gets PS2 ports because it's much closer to a PS2 than it is 360/PS3 and modern PCs.

Maybe 2x times the power isn't entirely accurate. Wii is more powerful than Xbox, but not enough to do all the effects that eat up resources at the same time with large levels and the works. Xbox and Wii are much closer than you think, Wii doesn't have enough of an advantage to do everything better. Games can look better but using different techniques that were never needed with Xbox in the first place.

Those games are the exception as well. Not every game on the Xbox looked like Riddick, or Doom 3. Btw the Xbox versions of these games were downgraded by A LOT. Also I was specifically mentioning shaders, which was the topic of discusion. Also the exception is starting to become a lot more common as the Wii gets older. Even multiplat(ps2/wii/PSP) games like silent hill are starting to look better than anything you mentioned thus far. It doesn't even matter if it is an exception or not, either way it proves that it is possible. Wheter 1 game looks better than anything on the Xbox, or 100 do that is proof enough.  Oh and btw Mario Galaxy runs at 60fps and pulls off the better lighting and shaders than all those games did on the Xbox at 30fps. Metroid Prime 3 has larger environments than anything in Halo 2 and is at the least equal in terms of graphic quality while running at 60fps. As for mentioning things that were high end on xbox, I remember watching a developer video about how the Riddick game is going to have bump mapping, and how that was amazing an such. Remember Riddick is one of the best looking Xbox games, and to claim Bump Mapping was a feature to brag about on it, especially when almost any Wii game that isn't shovleware has it and even some shovleware does that is what I mean about features that were high end on the xbox being common in the Wii game.  That is just one example of many things that were high end last generation, being very common on the Wii today.

I don't see the Wii using Mac API, do you? It's just manipulating the instructions, it doesn't need to be 2x as powerful to do that lol, even a second rate dev like HVS managed it, it just takes more work to get the same or better look on the dev's part, but we are talking about potential, not ease of developement. Then we get to, you are absolutely right that the PS3 doesn't use DX, that's why a lot of multiplat games look inferior on it vs the 360 or PC versions, it's a more powerful machine vs the 360, but because devs don't know wtf they are doing, they end up worse in many cases since they are so different. The PS2 is also a weaker machine, yet the GC and Wii get the same quality from western devs? these are all dev issues that has nothing to do with the potential of what the Wii can do vs the Xbox.

 This is where I was getting at with my first post.  In my opinion though, the more the TeV is used by a developer and it is hardware is known the better the game will look. Evidence of this is developers like Nintendo making almost all of there games surpass and exceed anything we saw last generation. The more they know the less power is wasted, and it is very possible for it to get to the point where you could achieve the same effects with the same requirements. That is why there is a higher learning curve with a console like the Wii, that doesn't follow a 1:1 path that PC's do. So yes the common developer won't defrentiate games greatly from last generation, but the developers who put the most work into the game will make a game that could be recognized as something that wasn't possible last generation. Really I don't think any console this generation made a big jump in terms of what we get output wise compared to the jump we got other generations. This is evident, even when the leap is by the same amount. Games are getting more expensive, and the amount of things you could do when upgrading and staying profitable are decreasing. The only platform that seems relatively safe from this is the PC, where most every developer is familar with the hardware.

Squilliam said: @Pearljam: Off Topic: Did you know that the developers of Sacred 2 ported Direct3d (X) to the PS3?

did they? man you learn something new everyday.

People love to use SC as an example and I don't know why since Epic games is shitty with their engines outside of the PC-like realm, just look at UE3 on PS3, it's a shitfest, it was the same with UE2 as well, they haven't yet written a successful engine outside of PC and Xbox (360.)

sc94597: Riddick didn't use bump mapping, it used normal mapping and that was a huge deal back then. It had more to do with the evolution of programming techniques than it did with the actual hardware and showed what you could pull off with a programmable pipeline that wasn't even supposed to be able to do those effects. And if you don't even know the difference between the two, tell me why I should even reply to your posts anymore when the subject we are discussing is shaders?

I won't argue about your other points, I already said that the Wii is more powerful than Xbox but that has more to do with the CPU and memory not the shader capabilities. The GC CPU was a little better than the Xbox CPU, so why would the Wii CPU be weaker? I don't think Metroid Prime 3 looked equal to Halo 2, it looked better but I don't remember environments being as big or as populated. I also didn't see AI as complex or as many moving characters on screen at once. But I could be wrong, give me specific levels that you remember being larger and more open than the stuff in Halo 2.

Educate yourself about the different forms of "mapping" that are used before you even talk about it. You might begin to see the point I'm trying to make. And you'll understand why I say that the Wii can't do all the effects as well, so it uses different effects altogether that are actually less resource hungry.