This is my theory on how powerful the wii is.

Alright the reason why nintendo didn't give the specs on the wii at release is because

1 they wan't people to care about having fun more than getting orgasms from graphics and

2 they wanted the devs to concentrate on casuals and one thing that is on a casuals list of a fun game isn't graphics.

Now for my theory on the wiis power.

The wii imo is about 4 times stronger than the gc and 3 times stronger than the xbox. This is because the wii has faster ram, more ram, a more efficient processor , and is more powerful than the gamecube in raw power and about as powerful as the xbox in raw power.

Now the xbox 360 and the ps3 are about 6-8 times powerful than the wii in specs, but they have to sacrifice a large part to produce hd which isn't too important for a good looking game as many members and I on vgchartz know. So this means about 30-50% of the power put in the game is to produce high resolutions.

Now this may make them only 4-5 times better than the wii due to the large part of them going to hd. Also you have to take in consideration these consoles are filled with huge bottlenecks and aren't as efficient as the wii.

So that makes me think with all of these factors the games are only going to look 3-5 times better mattering how good the developer used less power to produce the high resolutions. Now that isn't too much of a difference as people may think. This allows many wii games to look better than alot of ps3 and 360 games. I would think of the hd consoles as the xbox and the wii as the ps2 in terms of graphics.

Alright but we also don't know the full specs of the wii until maybe in the future such as GDC or E3 nintendo might tell us the wiis true power. SO until we get official specs we don't know how powerful the wii is. For now the bad graphics are due to 3rd party devs being lazy or cheap. So prime 3 and mario galaxy could be a common thing to see in wii graphics if the 3rd party stops being either lazy asses or cheap . Oh and before people say gameplay> graphics I know but graphics are important too and I don't feel devs are trying hard enough. Sorry for any vulgar language in my post I was getting a little hyper.

AHHHH WALL OF TEXT.

Hold on while I read it....

Edit: Interesting read. I agree that when people say the Wii is 2x more powerful than the GC they are merely looking at numbers, which isn't in any way a clear cut indicator of actual power compared to the GC.

Thank you stever89. Bump I didn't right all of that for one reply disagree or agree with me the rest of you or just tell me you are impartial.

I do think Wii has some form of HD graphics at times. I have a component cable for my Wii and have it hooked up to my HDTV in my basement. Sadly the HDTV doesn't run in progressive scan, but the component cables fake a form of HD picture on my TV. When I play Endless Ocean at times, I do see differences in blurry quality and jagged polygons. However, when you go into the Zoom-In mode when focusing on hidden items/creatures, there is a GREAT amount of detail when you have an object and you are zoomed in. If you don't believe me, try it for yourself.

@Naraku_Diabolos 480p doesn't cause too much tear on the hardware. Its the same resolution just with progressive scan. The games do look nice though with progressive. THe color and everything.

 Cut into tiny pieces for easier (albeit, still difficult) digestion.

Realistically ...

Nintendo choose the hardware for the Wii with a focus on selling every unit at a profit, reusing their tools and technology for game development, and keeping game development costs down because they were heavily worried about the Wii being unsuccessful and/or third parties not supporting the system; if you're going to remain profitable on a system which only sells 10 Million units you don't really want to lose money upfront or have massive development costs.

When they decided to go forward with the Wii (rather than a more conventional system) they probably took the Gamecube's hardware and made whatever changes which would give them the most "bang for the buck" ... increasing the cache size on the Gekko or doubling the number of pixel pipelines on the Flipper (while increasing the clock speed) would put the system close to the limits of what SD can display without moving into the expensive material effects (from advanced pixel shaders).

One important question is whether graphics beyond what the Wii can produce actually matters?

I'm personally of the belief that videogames are a lot like comic books and cartoons in that making something look more realistic does not necessarily make it look better; quite often a simple line-drawing is far more interesting than a photograph, and can convey far more style and emotion than a movie.

Quoted for great truth.

No More Heroes is supposedly a very "ugly" game by technical standards, very low tech graphics. But the game looks incredible. It's incredibly stylish, and looks awesome when it's being played. But not because of any raw power, but because of raw style and emotion.

Why are we getting these "wii's power is hidden" threads? We have some user expecting cod4 graphics, and nearly = graphicle standards with the PS3 and xbox 360.

You have to look at the specs, then you will know the truth.

^ The problem is we don't have the all of the wii specs. Read my post again and you would know why specs aren't the only think that contribute to graphics.
@HappySquirel Yep as long as the graphics are 3d and there isn't too many jaggys the art is what matters. The power also contributes to physics and Ai though which could effect gameplay so that is why power is important.