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Well, you could *play* some made in the last 10 years and figure it out based on example.

I have, and there are a fair number of great games out there. You mentioned Starsiege Tribes, I preferred Tribes 2 just for the sheer amount of tomfoolery you could do with all of the various kits. I played a fair amount of Counterstrike when everyone else did back in the early 2000's and consider Call of Duty 4 a great successor to it. Team Fortress 2 was also quite awesome in it's own right, and Valve's continual commitment to quality expansions really helped the fact that the initial release was a bit underwhelming. Left 4 Dead took up a few weeks of my time as well...the list goes on and on.

However, Nexuiz isn't trying to be any of these things. It's trying to be traditional first person shooter, and I find that most people pin the blame on it not being "innovative" enough or some such nonsense. It's not a bad game because it's not "innovative", it's a bad game because it's a bad traditional deathmatch FPS. It's a subtle distinction, but it's important.

The Unreal Tournament series already out-Quaked Quake 3, years ago.

No it didn't. It made the same mistake that Nexuiz did, throw a bunch of content in a game and see if it stuck, only difference being that the content was professionally made and thus had an ounce of quality control. It was fun because nobody had really bothered to do that before on the scale that UT did. Now, however, it's pretty obvious which game had actual staying power and which one was a short-lived gimmick.

Except that the XBox 360 and PS3 can often use even more than the Wii. If you turn off the Wii's 'connect24' option, it's measured at 1.3 watts, as seen in this article.

With the PS3, if you leave it on 'remote play' standby, it uses 24 watts. This guy did some interesting measurements. Among the more interesting ones:

Satellite TV receiver (non DVR), standby or off: 15 watts.
ReplayTV DVR: 30 watts standby, 34 watts active.
Christmas tree, sparsely lit: 61 watts.
HP Compaq 2510p work laptop, idle: 67 watts.

So if you're really concerned about how much power your Wii uses in standby, make sure you're unplugging your receivers, DVRs, christmas trees, and computers when not using them as well.

But that's standby? What about when they're on and running? The first article mentioned shows some interesting figures - namely that the 360 averages 185 watts, the PS3 averages 193 watts, their test PC averaged 198 watts, and the Wii averaged... 17 watts?

So the Wii uses 1.3 watts idle, 9-11 watts on Connect24-idle, and 17 watts while active.

The PS3 uses as low as 1.9 watts idle, 24 watts in 'remote start' standby, and up to 193 watts while playing a game.

Sorry Greenpeace - which system is greener?

What I find really amazing is that they managed to pack at least double the performance of a Gamecube (this has been known for quite some time) into a chassis even smaller than the Gamecube.

Look at THIS image and marvel at what Nintendo's engineers are capable of.

Here are a few possible designs:

xbox
xbox
joke
xbox

And, a portable gamecube:
gamecube

But look what happens when Sony tries to be innovative.
PSP Metal Gear Acid 3D-binoculars, full story, that's one pair of sexy glasses.
I'm sure the PSP will never make you look like a geek.