Why?  It's extremely simple and was made by a cast of under 30 people.

The only thing you really couldn't do was as detailed physics...(or so they said) but considering they went all "floaty" with the physics anwyay i can't see that being that big of an issue.

Haha, yup!

It does help explain the absence of first rate FPS, WRPG games as these are almost strictly the field of PC exclusive or big name PC/HD console developers.

Infinity Ward couldn't be bothered...

Bethesda can't be bothered.

Valve wants to make a Wii game for kids.

Bioware can't be bothered.

Lionhead is 360 exclusive.

Those polish fellows who made the Witcher can't be bothered.

ID can't be bothered.

Epic can't be bothered.

If I missed anyone out, its likely they can't be bothered either.

Context of the argument, it doesn't matter if it's meaningful for us, it matters if it's meaningful for them. Developers are a different breed than the gamers themselves, and that gap has only been widening. In this point, i kind of understand where Procrastinato is going with this, if the devs had their hearts set on a certain kind of development that the Wii can't offer, than that's the end of it.

Of course, they can be blamed for being single-minded in what they presume to be "advancement," but they can't be blamed for a lack of passion. Can't force that.

' Fun was coming back in' WTF, so ps1 or ps2 or n64 or xbox where not fun? Shit I can get way more fun playing TF2 on my ps3 then a soccer mom can get playing, I mean exercising with wii Fit

Well, for a start: How many PS2 games had an interactive physics based environment? Could a Wii game support a model where a level designer can litterally throw a million interactive things on the screen at once with no care for how it may perform? These two elements are things I never saw on a PS2 era game.

For example Quaz51 on Beyond3d.com made a working calculator with the LBP level designer. Using the physical levers and such.

Besides graphics and production values associated with producing big budget games at an unprecidented expense how are any of these games drastically different from games produced by these studios on previous generation hardware?

While you respond to this consider that games like Half-Life, Counter Strike, Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Theif, Tribes, Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 Arena contained (almost) all of the gameplay mechanics that are available in modern FPS and were released over a decade ago on hardware that is less powerful than the Dreamcast.

PS2 games?  Not sure.  The Xbox had at least one though with Half Life 2.

As for the Wii being able to support a model where you can thrown a million of interactive things on the screen?  Dunno.  I doubt LBP could support a million either though.

The physics model in general in the game left me unimpressed though.  It's actually why i never play it... it ruins the platforming.

Additionally i've played games with 2D interactive physics based enviroments on my PC which was less powerful then a Wii.

Clickteam stuff for example.  Though it's less indepth.  I actually find it a more satisfying model and creator though.

You're talking about gameplay, 90% of the work in creating games has nothing to do with gameplay. The 3d artists for a game like Halo 3 can be more creative than someone working on Halo 2 for example. I don't see where most people working on a game get to be innovative, creative yes and innovative, no. We're talking about artists and programmers leaving EA, not the design staff.

How do they get to be more creative?  The artwork has to be pretty consistant all around right.

Oddly enough, I suspect that the average modeler or artist would say that HD game development is far less creative than game development on previous generation consoles ...

If you look at how games were developed for the N64/Playstation generation the typical artist in a game studio would be involved in the production of models and textures for a large portion of the 3D assets in game and would even be able to produce some of the most interesting elements of the game. In the previous generation artists had to specialize more and tended to become either modelers or texture artists, but they still were involved in the creation of a large portion of the 3D assets in game and had some work on some of the most interesting elements in game.

With the size of development teams and the ammount of content produced artists can work months in a row on a repetitive task working on unimportant details on assets that the average gamer will never notice; and (on top of this) the work has become so unchallenging that many studios (including Epic) are offshoring the development of most of the content for their games to China.