The design decisions which effect gameplay (floaty platforming) had nothing to do with what the physics model could or could not produce.

The half-life 2 model was professionally designed. You simply could not induce a scenario with the Xbox or PC version of that game to cause the game to come to a complete standstill, frame-rate drops when physics were involved however were well documented. You can look it up if you're interested.

A million interactive objects is an exageration, but like with Quaz51's working mechanical calculator there were litterally hundreds of parts working together to make it work. Its an example of a modern game engine really in a lot of ways.

Nostril hairs in the HD games?

Well for the most part, the stuff produced in the 3d worlds in previous generations look pretty bland by comparison to some of the things in the current generation. Sure it takes 10 weeks to make a car in Forza 3 compared to a week in Forza 1, but the final result of the car does look pretty fantastic and that 3d modeler can be pretty proud of his work. The current generation HD consoles really can show off the quality of a lot of design work which was missed due to muddy textures, low resolution etc in the previous generation. They may also be frustrated in having to vet every single design off a tight performance budget and having their design work culled to fit into the games.

Design work does count for something, the average consumer if shown pictures of Killzone 2 and Fable 2 and Uncharted 1 actually tend to pick Fable 2 the majority of the time. So from a lay persons perspective the design work still counts for something. The creativity and artistic direction still count as well.

Please, if the developers want to be "artistic" why are they working at a business? Why don't the just make games for themselves like people used to do? Having a job and doing exactly what you want, whenever you want to are two mutually exclusive things. The average person seems to know this, but game developers don't. They're selfish.

This is kinda backwards thinking, in my opinion.  HD artists spend their time making what they find interesting -- usually characters, and important game elements.  The garbage cans, trees, etc... tht's farmed off to art houses that have loads of that stuff in a catalog already, and just need to tweak it some to fit with the style of the game, and the specs of the customer (being the dev house).

I don't think you can claim that HD artists are "less creative" because they don't spend their time modelling trash cans and newspaper dispensers, that for the most part, weren't even worthy of being present in games in previous generations.

But the design work that is rewarding is handled by a tiny group of people ... and in a game like Forza or Grand Turismo the majority of artists get the joy of modeling or texturing dozens of different wheel designs or spoilers in order to add customization options that few people will ever care about.

Your statement goes a long way towards proving my point.  Why did Rockstar North, one of the industry's premier development houses, coose to make what is basically the same game with HD technology, rather than making GTA IV on the Wii, XBox, PS2, just like they did with GTA3, GTA:VC, GTA:SA (yeah I know they weren't on the Wii)?  Why didn't they make GTA4:Wii and bring a whole bunch of waggle gamplay into the game, instead?

The end result is, it doesn't matter.  They chose to not make a Wii GTA4.  They didn't want to.  Instead they chose to make the same old game (which has been proven fun, time and time again), with a fresh coat of paint, and a new story.  They could have chosen to make a fourth last gen installment, and fiddled with the proven gameplay instead.  But they didn't.  Ponder that for a moment.

@ HS: I think I'll leave that one to between you and procrastinato as his enjoyment of beer qualifies himself for the argument better, just don't expect a timely response.

@NJ5

Dead Rising, less zombies - less fun. But overall those talks, that less horsepower supposedly leads to diminishing creativity in games, are BS. There's a proverb - a bad reaper never had a good shears, or I'd prefer another one - bad dancer always blames own balls.

Let me get back to the OP topic, and comment on ths at the same time, albeit a little indirectly.

Ponder Madden '10 for a moment.  The design team spent most of the past year working on the new online franchise features, most likely, because it made sense on both the PS3 and 360, given their excellent network support.  In previous years, the HD Maddens have put a lot of effort into improving their animation systems, and their tackling mechanisms, to feel more realistic, and give the "you are really there" feeling a serious boost from previous iterations of non-HD Madden Football.

The Wii Madden does not support these features.  They can't (its not a choice) do realistic animations -- the Wii doesn't have the math-crunching horsepower to animate two football teams realistically with a reasonable framerate. They can't do the new tackling, because again, the Wii doesn't have the horsepower to do the physics simulation necessary.  They can't make the game seem as much like the flashy TV experience you get on a Sunday afternoon -- not even on a SD screen, with the relatively weak Wii GPU (relative to the HDs, I mean).

These are the design teams' attempts at making the game better, when it comes to sports.  They've successfully done it for years, too.  They can't really change the game (but they can add new gameplay features, like online franchise, if the console supports it decently) -- mostly what they can do is make it cooler, make it slicker, make it shiny.

Given the choice of retooling their work of the past 9 years to work on the Wii, much as it did from 2001 to 2005 (remember, they've been there already), and improving the experience overall, bringing what the fans want (the feeling and raw excitement of an american football game, which is largely a spectacle, not just a game)... which do you think any one of the individual developers would choose, given the chance to do so?

I bet they could recycle the most recent edition of XBox (not 360) Madden to work on the Wii.  The only real work required would be to update the roster.  Maybe they could squeeze a couple more minor features in... maybe the characters could have ~35 bones in their animated skeletons, instead of ~30.  Not the near 100 that the HD versions probably have, but it would still be more.  Cheap.. fast.. right up the Wii alley.  Well... not upping the animation bone count, but the roster update should be cheap.

Exciting?  Cool?  Maybe they could keep them from talking to the HD teams, and finding out how much closer to the football experience their games get.  Maybe they aren't football fans... they're just "creative robots" who don't care about football, but instead love to make football fans (who they don't understand, since they don't care about football) happy with new features they've cooked up on their own.

This same issue crops up again and again, across most of the "stock" game genres.  Working on the Wii doesn't suck -- its fun if you aim for something small.  Something less, than what you're used to, if you're a pro.  People can, and do, get excited about small stuff and really get into it.  But... you're rarely going to get devs who passionately make big games to want to make something small, except in a rare break from their usual routine... almost a vacation.

I don't ever expect much from the Wii -- all the good stuff for it comes from diamond-in-the-rough devs who never could have landed a HD contract without something cool under their belts.  Or from Nintendo, because they have an obvious agenda, and frankly, because they pay their awesome teams quite well for their creative talents.  The diamonds are pretty rare, I'm afraid.  And usually, after they show up, the "lets make it cooler.. a lot cooler" dream whisks them away to HD-land.