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Some Truth to Wii as GameCube 1.5?
Newsweek's N'Gai tackles the allegation that the Wii is a glorified GameCube. He specifically looked at recent comments by Microsoft's Robbie Bach saying that 'the video graphics on it aren't very strong; the box itself is kind of underpowered; it doesn't play DVDs; there are a lot of down-line components [that] aren't actually that interesting. ... They don't have the graphics horsepower that even Xbox 1 had. So it makes sort of the comparison set a little bit difficult.' LevelUp spoke with a pair of technical experts at third party publishers and learned that, essentially, Bach's comments about horsepower are accurate. However, "the 'Gamecube 1.5' moniker, while accurate, doesn't mean that gamers won't see graphical improvements on the Wii. 'There are three main differences which will result in graphics improvements. One, the increased memory clock speed, from 162 megahertz to 243 megahertz, means that it is easier to do enough pixels for 480p mode versus 480i. Two, the enhanced memory size of the Wii gives much more room for image-related operations such as anti-aliasing, motion blur, etc. The performance to these memory systems from the graphics chip is also improved. So full-screen effects and increased texture usage seem likely as a result.'"
I'm afraid you are gonna fight a losing battle with the people on here who are convinced that the Wii has stronger gameplay than its competitors despite it not actually having any good games (except Wii Sports but only then when playing with other people) purely on the basis of the artificial argument that somehow graphics and fun are mutually exclusive.
On some level I don't care. I'm too happy playing Saints Row (when it comes out for the PS3 later this year you might wanna check it out - it fixes so much that's wrong with the 3D GTA series), PGR3, Dead or Alive 4, Oblivion and a whole host of other titles. I even have good titles to look forward to in the next few months (Forza 2 and Virtua Fighter 5 for example). Meanwhile, the Wii has really bad mini-games and sub-standard ports (NFS Carbon for example lacks online play). Oh, and Virtual Console of course. Because what I really want is a £180 box that's plays NES games.